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So, I purchased this base for a diorama I'm making. I believe it's pine.
Now, obviously, I want to do some work on the base itself and make it look sexy, then seal the whole thing before putting on terrain and stuff. What can I do to make it look tanner, or more aged-down?
Also, if someone could point me towards tutorials for this kind of thing, that would be great, instead.

You need to distress the wood slightly, it looks too pristine lol. I would recomend buying bison wax ( its a hard with a to tan it up a wee bit

Use wood stain to make it dark.

if i remember my high school woodworking...

Sand a lot with progressively finer paper

Stain, sand, stain some more

then polyurethane seal, then sand and seal again.

its been years.

Start with a low grit sand paper until you are basically using paper or wet sanding it (wood is porous so don't wet sand), typically start at roughly 100 and go higher till probably around 700 or so and that will be plenty, if you want baby smooth go to 1000 grit and then stain and seal it. BOOM baby butt smooth and ready for a pine car derby. Typically you don't make the base the scenery as it is a picture frame of sorts. You want that thing looking elegent while the combat happens within it as a frame. It makes it look professional. Once you seal it, prime it black, if you are going to use the wood grain then I would use either dark stain such as walnut, maybe go as light as cherry but that would be it.

Colouring, staining and finishing wood is a whole subject in itself. It is very easy to go wrong here.

Once you start to stain the base you won't be able to go back if it all goes hideously wrong, so I'd suggest getting some scrap pieces of wood in the same material if at all possible and test your chosen stains and varnishes on it, before committing your base to the process.

Of course, if the cost of the base is very little, use that as a test piece. Up to you really.

Let us know how you get on, yes?

Pine is awful for staining.

Paint it black imo.

Get a nice piece of hardwood if you want to stain.

If you are gonna stain it, make sure to talk to someone at the hardware store about what stain will work good with pine.

Its very porous and will look blotchy if you do it incorrectly.

Looks like your standard craft store pine plaque (quite a good one, at that - I generally have to dig through half the rack to find a passable one and even those usually require filling, as well as sanding, to take paint with a smooth finish). It will definitely require sanding to get everything nice and smooth (I can even see some fuzzy edges from rough routing), but know that no matter how smooth it seems, it won't likely take a stain evenly.

The issue is the highly porous wood - the end grain is going to soak up stain like crazy, turning several shades darker than the top and sides. If you want relatively even coloration, you're going to need to hit it with a sealer first. Come stain time, I generally use things like Minwax Polyshades - combination stains and polyurethane varnish, which don't require any further finishing and are relatively forgiving in their application and dry time.

As for the color, remember that stains are translucent. Like inks or even heavily thinned acrylic paint, you can build up the color by applying successive layers. For example, on light pine, one or two thin coats of Rosewood gives a warm (more orange than yellow, and rather subdued) tan. Keep on adding coats and that will slowly shift toward a darker red-brown. Letting it soak into porous wood, however, gives you a rather dark version of the red-brown immediately.

Rabidmofo wrote:
Pine is awful for staining.

Paint it black imo.

Get a nice piece of hardwood if you want to stain.

If you are gonna stain it, make sure to talk to someone at the hardware store about what stain will work good with pine.

Its very porous and will look blotchy if you do it incorrectly.

I second the idea of painting it black.

I used a similar piece of pine to make a base for a Rhino I painted for a competition. I thought about staining it, but I remembered that staining pine is a pain so I sanded it down and painted it black.

Here is how it turned out:

Pine is a pain in the butt to stain accurately.

I used to work in the guitar business and spent too much of my life being bored to death about wood pores, density, ability to take paint, weight, grain etc etc...

I would definitely speak to a local wood worker who might be able to recommend a decent product or even mixture of products, a lot of real craftsmen have their own unique blends and techniques that give them their signature finish.

I have always liked the idea, should I get good enough to risk a diorama that I would buy this style of base, rough it up with a sandpaper and then chuck it in the garden for 6/12 months (preferably over winter) to really age it!