The easiest wood graining you will ever do is trim graining. Because the size of the substrate is small, or thin in diameter you don’t need to do elaborate graining on trim substrates. Outside of exterior metal doors, select trim pieces (or all the trim in a single room) is probably the most common of graining jobs - at least in a residential environment.
See Woodgraining With a Brush for more information on brush graining techniques commonly used on wood trim.
I must admit that I will talk the home owner into a split “painted and stained” type of railing when asked to woodgrain a railing. While I have done a short railing run or two that I had to grain both spindles, posts and hand rail. Doing a good clean job on 175 spindles with good variety makes doing the whole railing a tough job, but it is do-able for more seasoned wood grainiers.
Oak and mahogany woodgrained casing
click on image to enlatge
Priming
New wood should be primed and base coated with 123 Bullseye or BIN primer sealers - used as a primer and tinted base coat. New trim will require two coats of primer. Previously painted trim may only need one coat. See Woodgraining Base Coats and Glazes.
Trim graining is usually brushed
Because there are contours and grooves in the profile of most millwork, you will find that a wood graining rocker tool for instance, does not work on trim. Steel combs and rubber combs will work to a limited degree. The most useful of the combs are probably a set of your own home-made rubber combs of various sizes and shapes made from rubber squeegees. Brushes on the other hand, will get into the nooks and crannies of the trim profile and will conform to the surface profile of curves and shapes.
My preferred brushes
For dragged graining I like to use fan fitches of various sizes, chip brushes and mottlers. Flogging will work for creating pores, but you will be better served using the sides of a softening brush or a regular paint brush for these because the size of the substrate doesn’t lend itself well to a “real” flogger. Pores can also be made with synthetic wool pads “combed” through the glaze in short broken strokes.
A flogged background (see Wood Graining Backgrounds) will work well with most wood types, you can fine tune the flogging with a comb or whisking brush to best duplicate the pores of the wood you are producing. Over graining can be done by dragging out a streaky applied second glaze layer over the top once the first layer is thoroughly dry. See Introduction to Faux Finishing Tools for a description of the various brushes and their use.
Woodgrained door casing to match a manufacturer's stained fiberglass door.
close up of the trim graining in picture to the left
Woodgrained railing
click on image to enlatge
Floor baseboard trim wood grained in mahogany
Variety
If you are doing a couple of door casings and the baseboard in one room, you won’t need to worry too much about grain variations. Even if some of the trim looks similar to each other, you will be fine with a quiet brush grained finish.
The key to wood grain variety is to have some pictures of the real wood you are doing on the job to inspire you and to jump start your imagination. I like to use pictures of wood floors for such because I will get a lot of grain variations in one single picture. You can also use pictures of furniture, doors and other wood trim from another house for this purpose. See this link to see a sample picture of an oak floor used for oak graining inspiration.
Woodgraining a Railing
Not unlike graining wood paneling, you can repeat grain patterns, just not right next to each other, but you should still try to add a wiggle here and there to make it a bit different. Nothing looks worse than wood grain repeated exactly in a continual rhythmic fashion. - it looks too fake, like Formica or the decal type of veneer on inexpensive office furniture.
Wood graining a railing is similar to doing door casing or baseboard, except that it is more of a focal point in a room than the door casing. You should put in more elaborate grain types (“burl” is a good one or flaming mottles) to give the wood a bit more pizzazz when doing a railing.
click on images above to enlatge
Woodgraining Trim
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