Aged Beer Carrier

We did this piece as a work sample for a long time customer who was interviewing for a new job.  It was meant to be more than just a show piece design.  It was important that the piece be both durable and reliably reproducible, so we didn’t want run the risk of making it from real recovered wood.  Instead, we made the piece from high quality baltic birch ply.  It’s a high quality product, with easy availability, and comes from a well managed source.  The birch also has the benefit of being a low tannin hardwood, which gave us a much wider margin of error with the aging process.

The parts were first oxidized, then additional patina was added with a mixture of oil and water based stains.  The base was then dry brushed with black and white paint, and distressed with a wire brush before it was completely dry.  Finally, the whole assembly was put into the sand blaster and worked over with medium fine abrasive.  The blasting raised the grain on the wood nicely, and gave the whole piece a really convincing wind and sun faded look.

And for the record, yes he got the job.

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