PROJECT: Weathered Wood Shelf

Something that has become popular of late is a weathered wood look. With gray being the new white (just ask Joanna and Chip), distressed gray-colored wood is a great fit for a lot of homes. But working with actual weathered wood has its challenges. First of all, you have to find it. And, once you do, it is often twisted and checked, and its structural integrity can be questionable (rotten!). If you surface a piece of weathered wood, the weathering goes into the dust collector. What is a woodworker to do?

I made this small wall shelf to show off some old (but favorite) pictures of my kids and a couple of knickknacks. It struck me that the weathered wood look might be cool, so I searched my options. It turns out there are many ways to “weather” or distress solid wood, and this is the course I took. More on my process later, but it involves using wood with a high tannin content. At the same time, I had been playing around with using black plumbing pipe for table legs and other structural components, so I decided to add that to the distressed look.

Gathering Supplies, Getting Started

Cutting down board with whittling knife — Mimicking weathered wood involves more than just changing the color. The author shaped the edges of the boards by whittling away stock with a pocketknife to distress them. A chisel or sander could do the job as well.

I chose red oak for the shelf because I had some in the shop and it did indeed have a sufficient tannin content for the weathering solution. I also took a quick trip to my local big box store and worked out the black pipe pieces I would need for my self supports and some black screws to match the pipe’s finish. I settled on “big and chunky” for my sizes.

Edge gluing and clamping red oak boards — After creating irregular edges on the back boards, glue them together to create an offset shape. This carries forward the idea of found or distressed wood, despite using good quality “new” red oak.

With all the components in hand, I sketched out the shelf and worked out the spacing so that the bottom shelf was wide enough to hold the three pictures of my kids. The ascending two shelves get shorter at each level. The back of the shelf is made of three boards: a wide center board and two narrower boards on each side of it. The center board is also longer than the other boards, and they are arranged to add to the offset, rustic feel I was going for. If you don’t have a wide enough center board, just edge-glue one from narrower stock.

Boring pipe hole in red oak board — *The bottom face of each shelf has a 1″ diameter stopped hole bored to accept the black pipe. If you use a differently sized pipe, adjust the boring appropriately to fit the support.*

Before I glued the back boards together, I broke out my pocket knife and whittled the edges of all three boards to reinforce the sense of the project. Looking back, I think I could have been even more aggressive in shaping the edges and ends of the boards. I glued and clamped the back together and moved on to the shelves to break their edges, too. After that, I bored a 1″ stopped hole in their bottom faces to accept the end of the black pipe support. The last bit of machining was routing a couple of short keyhole slots to hang the shelf — made with a keyhole bit. Then, I was on to finishing.

Brushing on Years of Age in Minutes

Applying Varathane weathered wood finish to red oak lumber — *The Varathane solution reacts to the tannins in wood to create a subtly variable gray color.*

I used a Varathane® product called Weathered Wood Accelerator. It reacts with the tannins in the wood to create a gray color. As the tannins vary, so does the graying, so it looks very natural. I used paste wax as the final finish, which allows for easier dusting but doesn’t look overly shiny.

Can of Varathane weathered wood finish — *It is quick and easy to use, and the results look great.*

With that done, I mounted the pipe “supports” and then, with the shelves level on the supports, I drove one screw through the back board and into each shelf from behind. Since oak is really hard, be sure to pre-drill pilot holes for the screws to keep from splitting the wood or breaking the screws. This is a heavy project, so anchor one of the keyhole screws in a wall stud, for safety.

Attaching black pipe shelf supports with screws — *With the red oak properly colored, the next step was to attach the black pipe “shelf supports” with short black screws.*

Now the photos I love (and that make my kids groan when they see them) have an honored place, and I’ve learned a bit about a quick, easy way to weather wood.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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