Refinish factory plastic wood grain steering wheel

The steering wheel in my 66 Satellite has pretty much faded/worn to a uniform tannish color as is typical. I've watched some guys on a few of the TV shows do faux wood graining on dashes with pretty amazing results and a minimum of materials and cost. Has anyone actually tried to re-grain their own wheel with good results? I'm figuring on spraying a base of a light oak-color coat on it and then hand rub, drag, wipe a darker, wood color on that to simulate a wood grain and then satin-clear coat the end result. This would probably be preceded with some practice on a piece of something or other - maybe PVC pipe. If anyone has tried this I would be interested in what type of paint was used and how it turned out.

Thanks

Heard some use a hacksaw drawn to make grain. Seen some hack jobs. pun intended. Some pictures of an NOS wheel sold on ebay $1225.

I’ve been reading up on some ideas. The hacksaw blade is a good one. I think I need to practice on a piece of plastic pipe and try some of them out.

thanks

Any advice on colors, preferably locally sourced (Lowes, etc).

I need to paint a worn dash vent panel to match my relatively nice cluster.

I would have to say practice practice practice, when you think you got it. Practice some more.

Ive had a couple done here over the years and always been top notch , in case you decide it not your thing

https://woodgrainwheels.com/

I may consider that. Kind of hate to put that type of money into rim restoration when the chrome isn’t near-perfect. Mine has a few pits here and there. Looks pretty good at arms length but up closer the chrome has some wear. I don’t see how they can re- chrome the rim without removing the rim material.

First effort on some pvc. It seems to a fairly straight grain is the easiest faux wood appearance approach. I used an awl to randomly add some faux end grain dots. I need to use a little coarser rasp to get some slightly deeper striations. The color is just some old Mahogany gel stain I had left from a project years ago just to get a feel for the appearance. I'll keep after it to see if I can come up with something to try on the wheel.

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/e7z5GXchRZySmtxM4BoVow.suo5lU0LSXA7O4mtLiEPnz

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/mJKUfQWpRRqyCT5YA_JPMw.5VQKTJiddzzH8Rqrb13As0

That looks pretty good.

Any idea what paint you're gong to use?

Right now I’m looking at acrylic paints. Burnt sienna with some black added has been recommended for coloring the grain in although just black can work. Then I read a suggestion to use a translucent acrylic in a brown oxide tint that suits you. The idea to use a translucent is that it allows the dark grain highlights to show through. There was also a suggestion to use a retarder in the paints to slow drying and give more time for covering and wiping the excess off. I’m planning to clear it after that. I have a can of Eastwood 2K matte clear I may try. If not satisfied with that I’ll get a pint of PPG clear. I need to go down to Hobby Lobby to look at some acrylics.

my experiments with pvc pipe are improving. I’ll post another picture when I think I’ve got it figured out.

An update - my initial effort was proceeding fairly well but then took a wrong turn so I sanded it back down and have started again. I’ll try to take some photos this effort. So far my initial efforts have caused me to deviate from the YouTube videos on wood graining pvc pipe.

I’m giving up on acrylic paints for this - they do not work for this. Artist oils are much superior in most aspects. I’m using Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, and Black (black very, very sparingly). I’ve abandoned trying to artificially grain the wood with coarse sandpaper (40 grit) or a coarse rasp. This second time I sanded with 220 grit in line with the wheel rim surface.

For a first coat I mixed the two Sienna tints in roughly equal portions and added a tiny amount of black to get a medium tan/brown color slightly darker than the base plastic on the wheel rim. The down side to oil paint is it takes days to dry - possibly 4-5 days on the first coat. On the second coat I will mix a little less Raw Sienna and a little more black to come up with a reddish brown which I will paint brush on in raw strokes to indicate color streaks as found in veneer surfaces. Then I’ll take a paper towel and very lightly wipe and even slap those brown strokes with it to spread, thin and diffuse it in with the tan base to look like normal color pattern swirls in wood veneer. I didn’t cover all the tan up - it just creates a multi-hued, swirling surface similar to hardwood. More days to dry between coats.

This is where I got to on the first effort. My plan was to use dark acrylic paint to wipe over the oil and carefully wipe it off in hopes it would stay mostly in the coarse sanding scratches to resemble filled/sealed grain. This didn’t work well as the acrylic tends to dry quickly even with a retarder, it didn’t stay in the sand scratches and it can pile up in dry clumps on the surface. It also turned the overall color tone to a black-brown which got away from the more reddish-brown color range I was shooting for. It might have been OK if I wanted a black walnut wheel rim.

So I decided to give this last approach up, sand it back down and just concentrate on using the oils and a three-coat application with increasingly deeper and browner tones. I have a couple aftermarket wood wheels and a Corvette plastic wood grain wheel and up until I tried the dark acrylic, it was looking pretty nice in comparison to them. The first coat is drying again. After I apply the second, slightly darker coat I’ll take some more pictures and post.

Here are a couple pictures where I'm at. This was the first coat I applied of light brown. Even after 7 days this wasn't completely dry which worked against me in the next step.




This is the second try at adding some color variation. Not too satisfied as it isn't as good a pattern as I had the first time at this point. But with the slightly wet oil paint from the first coat every thing I put on it tended to blend together. I couldn't do much more with it until it dries as I didn't want to get it too much darker at this point.



I'll let this dry thoroughly and use a fine brush to work in some dark grain swirls and streaks (I hope).

I'm done with the coloring phase. Next step is to apply some clear urethane after a few more days drying. Cloudy day - color looks better out in the sunlight.

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Looks good.

Did I miss what paint(s) you used?

I used artist oil paints - burnt umber, raw umber and black (sparingly). Also bought a small bottle of linseed oil as a reducer. Bought everything at Hobby Lobby. I have a can of Eastwood 2K clear I’m going to try for the top coat since I have it sitting here. It will be shiny but I can dull it down with a 3M trizact pad. If that doesn’t work I’ll use PPG clear.

I applied several coats of 2K clear on it today which seemed to work just fine over the oil paints. This is supposed to be satin but so far is pretty glossy. I plan to put one last coat on it tomorrow.

Done with this project for better or worse. Applied 3 - 4 coats of 2K clear which should protect it from wear. Spokes on wheel are fair condition with a bit of rash in the center satin areas. The bright chrome is pretty good - just need to clean up a little.