graining for wood finishing

Wood graining is a step in the wood finishing to make artificial grain. Wood graining is done to make the “wood looked” in the finishing. Wood graining can be performed with the glaze application at the sealer or base coat (see our previous article: wood graining).  The graining also can be done with a wood stain at the raw wood. The graining can be performed by a stain with a particular color (usually dark brown or black) at the  wood  to mimic the wood grain. This Wood graining processes is done to touch up the puttied wood or to enhance the wood with vague grain. The wood graining is then followed by the next finishing process to make the desired color. 

Wood graining is art handwork. It is need to be done patiently, carefully and cautiously. It is an art to to paint the wood. The stain should be in the proper strength. Too thin stain will make the vague grain looked mean that we cannot make the grain effect. While too strong stain can bring to the “too artificial grain” that is not naturally looked.  

Here's how to do wood graining:

paint the stain to make the grain

sand the "too thick stain"

Use a small tip brush (artist brush). Dip the tip of the brush into the wood stain; just the dip the tip not the whole brush let the tip to be wet and hold the stain. We can swap the wet brush to a rag to avoid “too wet stain”.  Then brush the stain to line as the grain looked. We can follow the existing wood grain to enhance the vague wood grain, or we can make the new grain line. Do the brushing carefully, make sure the stain line is formed in the continuously and naturally.  
The stain line must be maintained to remain continuous, smooth and naturally looked. We can sand the stain if the stain is too thick. If necessary we can use thinner to wipe the stain and reduce the stain strength.

Do carefully check for the graining result before go to the next finishing process. Any correction for the wood grain can be done before the finishing process. Make sure we got the proper graining then we can start to do the complete finishing process. 

the finish result

 Wood graining  video