There are many ways to make boards look the part. In this overview I'll show the way I prepped the wood strips to make the hallway floor of Camden's upper level. Keep in mind this is project-specific and there are literally thousands of ways to make convincing boards.
The first thing is to select wood strips with a nice long grain. You can use different types of wood that are better suited to this task, but in this case I'm using simple basswood strips. Find boards that have a grain without bands or that look like they were crosscut (you can see one of those in the lower right in the photo above.)
I stain the boards as they are, with a dark stain (dark walnut by Minwax is one of man go-tos for dark stain look), let it absorb a while, then wipe clean.
In the below photo you can see the nice grain on the top one, and the choppy look the cross-cut ones give you. The top is what you want.
When dry, I sand the edges along the length, but not too much. This creates a little gap between the adjoining boards and shows some contrast like you might see in old floors.
Then I put on a contrasting layer of stain, in this case some red. Apply it to the whole board, ensuring it gets onto the areas you just sanded.
Here's a video of the process. Enjoy and please like and subscribe!
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