1922 Oldsmobile 43A instrument panel.

[OLDMAN]

My 1922 Oldsmobile model 43AT has an instrument panel that looks like wood (walnut), however it is metal.

I have heard that this process was done photographically. Does anyone know how this was done?

[JFranklin]

It is nice looking. Old woodgraining was done by experts with brushes, sponges, and other tools of the trade. I don't know how yours was done. There are hydro methods where a film is put onto liquid and the parts are dipped, but yours looks much nicer than what I have seen from that process.

[OLDMAN]

To add a comment to my above posting, I question the photographic process because of the color . I know that "color" pictures back then

were actually black and white photographs that were touched-up with color paints.

[wayne sheldon]

The color "photograph" wood-graining was very common in the 1940s and for a few decades thereafter on nice but not top quality furniture including console radios and early high end television sets. It always seemed odd to me that fake wood-graining was printed on actual wood (often a medium grade plywood, but sometimes a type of particle board).

Through much of the 1950s, my dad was part owner of the second dedicated television store sales and service in the Southern San Francisco Bay Area. Along time ago, he would lament the "drop in quality" manufacturing products and point out the "photographic" wood graining on television sets. I remember seeing a few brand new tv sets in stores growing up and looking at the identical graining on sometimes three tv sets in a row.

Similar photographic graining was used on automobiles in the postwar years also. Having been made aware of it by my dad, I remember once seeing a couple "tin woodies" station wagons when I was a kid, and pointing out that the graining on them was identical right down to the printed knots in the same spots. 

I don't know when the technology to photograph and print on shaped metal was initially developed, or improved to the point it became common practice on manufactured products? I suspect the basic technology would have been available somewhat before the second World War? However, I believe its use did not become commonplace until the postwar years.

 

I wish it was in much better condition. However, my 1927 Paige 6-45 sedan had beautiful wood-graining on the dash and interior and door trim. If I can ever get back to seriously working on the car, I will need to hope I can get good enough at wood-graining to make it at least decent enough.  Like most cars of the pre-depression era, it appears to have all been painted in stages by hand. 

 

In the late 1910s into the mid 1920s, a lot of automobiles had wooden dashes with some sort of material (often top material or some sort of imitation leather?) over the wood. A lot of people restoring such cars will nicely finish the wood with some sort of "natural" finish, and leave the material off.

 

A well done wood-graining can look very nice in antique automobiles. And it is how a lot of them were done originally.

[OLDMAN]

I found this process on-line.

 

Wood Grain on Metal Process

 

This may be the way it was done on my 1922 Oldsmobile instrument panel.

 

1. Wipe the metal to be painted free of dust.
2. Sand the metal.
3. Wipe off sanding dust and use a clean cloth with mineral spirits.
4. Apply a coat of paint with the wood graining tool.
5. Apply a coat of Polyurethane once dry.

 

I believe that my instrument panel was painted with a base coat of paint and let dry.

 

Next, painted again with the same or different color using the wood graining tool while the second coat of paint was still wet.

 

By letting the first coat of paint dry, no exposed bare metal would show.

 

Wood graining tools are sold on-line. Amazon carries them. Some wood graining tools are rollers with patterns that you simply roll across the metal.

[OLDMAN]

   A YouTube presentation by GIT Grain It Technologies shows the method used by over 65 American auto manufacturers 

from the late 20s to the early 50s for applying wood grain on metal.

   I assume that this was similar to the method used in the early 20s.