Mechanical modelling of ancient wooden objects requires data on old wood that are not easily obtained due to the difficulty to gather experimental material with well--‐known age and loading history. Mild thermal treatments seem to produce similar effect on wood properties as the slow oxidation process characterising the natural aging in protected conditions against whashig and UV. They offer the possibility to produce the appropriate material to study, for instance, the interaction between long--‐term hygromechanical loading and natural aging. The validation of this approach, however, is not straightforward as the demonstration can only work by interation.