How to realistically paint wooden wheel chocks.

I have been playing with a similar situation and I simulatethe grain with my hobby knife and then use a darker brown was to the lightly sanded grooves.
John

I had the same thing on my Dragon Wagon.
Having worked with heavy equipment for a number of years, I noticed that most planks, chocks, timbers of any kind that are used in construction soon become soaked in various fluids of some kind or another and will take on a greasy black colouration. Nothing near to a wooden plank in colour. So that's the route I took.

would it be modeling sin to actually use wood?

I would think the LHS would have a nice selection that could be cut to length, pounded to fit and painted to match

i think it's ok to use real wood so long as it's on a correct scale because the lines on the wood might differ and off-scale.

Absolutely nothing wrong with using real wood for this type of thing.
Works great to use wood as wood.

try getting some cigars and useing the wooden wrapper that's inside the tubes, I haven't tried it yet but I have a RSO with the pak 40 I want to replace the sides that are plastic with the thin wood and maybe put a tint to it to simulate some wolf P....