Sunburst Reclaimed Wood Wall Art

Dimensions: 33 inches in diameter; ¾-inch thick; Weight, 12 pounds. These are the first two projects I’ve ever made with this basic look (many acutely angled pieces radiating from a center point) and I’m really happy with them. They have a refined design but feature the beauty and diversity of rustic, reclaimed pallet wood. I think it would be a nice feature piece in a living room, den, bedroom, or office. Can you picture one above a fireplace, headboard, or side table? I’m tempted to keep one of them, but would love for both to find good homes 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. Click here to purchase.

Sunburst Reclaimed Wood Wall Art #1 — Sold at a neighborhood art show.

Sunburst Reclaimed Wood Wall Art #2

The Story

While watching various home shows on TV over several years I’ve seen various pieces of furniture and wall art that featured narrow wedges of wood, typically rough/rustic, arranged in this basic pattern, and I always liked them. So, I figured I’d take a shot at it myself. I used roughly 20 planks of reclaimed pallet wood, specifically the wider, shorter planks (roughly 5.25 x 35 inches) that typically form the bottom of a pallet. As a first step, I removed any nails that might interfere with my cuts or sanding. The second step was belt sanding. Because one side of these planks is often on dirty ground, the surfaces can be pretty grimey (as seen in the “before” pics). So, for my first pass with the sander I used a rough (80-grit) belt to quickly remove the dirt and stains on both sides of the planks. But I intentionally did not sand away all the scratches, dings, or original curved sawblade marks, etc., because I wanted the final piece to retain some of the wood’s reclaimed, rustic appearance. Then I switched to a fine (120-grit) belt on what I designated as the “top” of each plank—the one with the most character.

The third step was cutting the triangles. I didn’t do any geometry in advance to cut a certain number of pieces with a certain acute angle—like dividing the 360 degrees of a circle into 20 pieces, each with an 18-degree angle. That level of precision was too much to worry about and would have been almost impossible to realize, given I was using a hand-held circular saw to cut shortish pieces out of pallet wood with side edges that sometimes are not straight. I just figured that once I arranged the pieces into a circle, if necessary, I could either trim a couple of pieces to a slightly narrower (more acute) angle or cut a couple new slightly wider pieces. With each plank, I made two long diagonal cuts from the outer corners into the middle of the plank, then cut across the middle of the plank, creating four triangles per plank. This yielded almost 80 triangles in total, which I figured would enable me to make two or three wall art projects.

The fourth major step was to decide on a design. When I started arranging my triangles into a circular sunburst pattern (aiming for maximum variety of wood tone and grain pattern), to my great surprise and delight, I found that the circle was virtually perfectly complete with 22 pieces, and no adjustments (cutting new pieces or trimming existing ones) were necessary. When I started, I didn’t have any firm final design in mind, but I generally thought I’d trim the pieces down to accommodate a square or rectangular frame. (And I did end up doing that for another project.) But when I initially saw the full pieces in a circle, I really liked the idea of creating a basically circular final project—partly for the aesthetics and partly because I’d be wasting less material. I wanted something more visually interesting that just a circle with a smooth outer edge, so I came up with this sunburst design by using a jigsaw to cut a 90-degree corner into the outer edge, a uniform distance from the sharp point. The final step before assembly was lightly hand-sanding all the edges to remove burrs/splinters and achieve a smoother, more finished look.

I chose a 4x4-foot piece of 1/8-inch-thick underlayment, purchased from The Home Depot, and used my jigsaw to cut out a circle to serve as the backing for the final piece. I glued down the triangles one at time, with weights on top, for about 5 hours each. 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. Finally, I applied clear (“Natural”) Watco Danish Oil to help protect the wood and, especially, to bring out its natural color and accent the grain patterns.

I liked the first sunburst so much that I repeated the whole process and made a second one.

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