Sunburst of Reclaimed Wood in Square Frame

Sold at a neighborhood art show. Dimensions: 25 inches square; 1 inch thick; Weight, 14 pounds. This is the third project I made with this basic sunburst pattern (many acutely angled pieces radiating from a center point) and I’m really happy with it. It’s an attractive way to feature the diversity of reclaimed pallet wood. I think it would be a nice feature piece in a living room, den, bedroom, or office. Can you picture it above a fireplace, headboard, or side table? I’m tempted to keep it but would love for it to find a good home elsewhere. Two D-rings are attached to the back, so all you need to hang it is a hammer and a couple of nails. $200.

The Story

This was the third piece that I created out of a large set of triangles I cut from a bunch of wide planks of reclaimed pallet wood. Like the other sunburst projects, this one has 22 wedges. But partly because I had been extra choosy in selecting pieces for the first two projects, and partly just by coincidence, this one required a bit more sanding to straighten out some sides so they’d all fit together nicely to complete the 360 degrees. When that was done, I laid out all the raw pieces so that adjacent or nearby pieces would not be too similar in their natural tone or grain pattern. I numbered the back of each piece so I could replicate the planned pattern in the end, after several other steps in the creation process. I wanted to create something different from my first two sunburst pieces, so I decided on a framed square design. I determined that 23 inches was the maximum size I could achieve, so I cut a 23-inch square from a sheet of 1/8-inch-thick underlayment purchased from The Home Depot to serve as the backing piece and set it aside while I worked on the pallet-wood pieces.

On most projects using lots of different types of pallet wood, I like to feature their natural colors—partly because it’s most authentic and partly because I’m always interested (and think others might be, too) in the variety one can find hidden under the aged exterior of these artifacts we might otherwise see as basically all the same. But on this project, I decided to amp up the colors and magnify the diversity. So, I used Watco Natural [clear] Danish Oil on just six of the pieces, which shows off their natural color, but on the other 16 pieces I used 8 different stains or custom combinations of two selected stains. When they had dried, I glued the long thin triangles down to the circular backing piece one at a time, leaving pressure on them for at least 5 hours. Along the way, I painted a thin black line on the backing piece between most of the triangles, to create shadow lines in any places where small gaps exist between adjacent wedges.

Next, I turned the piece over and used my jigsaw to trim off the portions overhanging the edges of the square. Then I cut another square backing piece, 1 inch bigger, and glued the small square down in the center of the larger one, to help seat the frame that I intended to make. I made the frame out of 1-inch-square pine stock from The Home Depot. First, I used my router to cut a shallow groove out of one long edge, which would receive the small ledge of the bottom backing piece so it wouldn’t show from the side. Second, I cut the four pieces to length with mitered corners. Third, I painted the four pieces wood satin black (two coats). Fourth, I glued each piece into place and secured them with a few ½-inch wood screws from behind.

Related Items: Sunburst Reclaimed Wood Wall Art (#1 and #2), Pyramidal Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, Chevron Pattern Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, Plaid Basket-Weave Pattern Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, Parquet Design Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, Ten Stripe Design Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, 25 Small Squares Reclaimed Wood Wall Art, Stained and Natural D.C. Flags, Abstract Wall Art from Reclaimed Wood.