DIY Scrap Wood Arrow – Super Sized

Hi Guys, I’m enjoying all the projects ya’ll are sharing on the #sCrapWoodChallenge link up post and on Instagram, twitter and facebook!  I spent the day in my shop yesterday building a “just for fun” project for the challenge!  I’ve been building a lot of pull-out storage in my workshop using scrap wood so I have plenty of projects I could share — but I wanted to build something fun.  I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time that this small section of wall between the dining room and entry is the perfect spot for a giant arrow.  And that’s the fun project I ran with!

I’ve been trying to use up as much scrap wood as possible in my workshop redo not create more but when I tackled the sliding doors, my first plan didn’t work so I ended up with a whole bunch more scrap to use up.  1 step forward, 2 steps back kinda’ thing.  I wanted to stain my arrow dark so if this pile would work for my arrow project that would be perfect.

I wanted 60″ tall and 10″ wide.  Lucky me!  Three planks side by side are about 10″ wide and I had plenty of wood to span the length I wanted.

I choose the boards I wanted and put them together.  Then I used painters tape to keep all the planks together so I could flip the whole thing over and keep the boards where I wanted them.

Then I used chalk pencils to mark the wood up with triangles so I could put them back together after separating them to drill my pocket holes.  Light colored chalk pencils show up easily on dark wood and visa versa on light wood.  

I used blue and yellow to draw marks to show me how to put the wood back together.  I used green to mark where I wanted to drill pocket holes. 

I drilled all my pocket holes with my Porter-Cable pocket hole jig  — review here.  

Then I reassembled my arrow and screwed it together.

I used a rafter square and a chalk pencil to mark the angles on the top of the arrow. 

Then I made a tail.  I cut 45º angles on the ends of 4 sized boards creating a longer, continuous angle out of all 4.  I secured them together with pocket screws.  It wasn’t quite right yet so I cut off the outside edges — making sure there were no screws in the path of my blade!I also used a jigsaw to cut out the center ending up with what I think looks like the tail of a whale.

I used it anyway because I didn’t want to start over.

I sanded the edges before attaching it to the main body of the arrow.

Then I played around with adding wings to the top angle.  I used cut-offs from the tail.

I first secured two pieces together and then went to the miter saw and cut off the uneven ends.

 

I used the first “wing” as a template to make sure the second wing was the exact same size.

Then I screwed both wings onto the arrow.

I then sanded the whole thing down thinking I’d like the more distressed look.  I decided I did not like the distressed look.

So I stained the whole thing again with gel stain — the color being a custom mixture — a custom mixture being a kind of “Sunday casserole” made of a whole bunch of cans of different colors dumped into one.

And then a light coat of black over the top of that.

That’s it ya’ll!

I’ll eventually hang it on the wall but I don’t want to put any holes in the wall until I decide if I’m happy with this whale tail and decide if this is the right spot.Maybe I like it in the library.

It was a fun project that used up maybe half my scrap wood pile from my failed workshop doors.  I’ll have to see what else I can come up with to use up the rest.

from http://bit.ly/1NPoqSB

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