What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.
Observant viewers will notice that there is a new addition to the background. This is a 3D wood art piece that I recently made and I’m going to show you guys how I made it.
First, let’s start with wood selection. For my personal build, the foundation was a 2’x4’ sheet of OSB. Because I knew whatever was going to be in the background is going to be visible, I went with OSB because it naturally has that 3D layered look. Now, just a heads up. I purchased a precut 2’x4’ piece but if you want to save money. Definitely buy a regular 4’x8’ sheet because, at the time of this video, that only costs about $11 and the 2’x4’ sheet cost about $19. I was in a rush and haven’t moved my table saw to the new shop yet so I didn’t feel like cutting and really paid the cost. This is definitely not recommended but you do what you gotta do.
Next, we’re going to pick up the wood that makes up the various 3D slats. For this, I personally went with 3 different wood species to give more variation in the final product. If you want something more cohesive in look, maybe buy the same wood for everything.
I personally went with:
(2) 1”x2”x8’ Douglas Fir
(2) 1”x2”x8’ Hemlock
(1) 1”x2”x6’ Poplar
(1) 1”x2”x10’ Poplar
These 6 boards gave me pretty much the exact amount of wood needed for the entire inner 3D pieces.
Next for the frame, I went with (2) 2”x2”x8’ boards of Douglas Fir. This left me with about 3-ish feet of spare material so you can buy less but I knew that I needed the spare just because of how I planned to cut the wood to get certain pieces of the boards.
Other materials needed will include paint, painting supplies, wood strain or finish, wood glue, and various things to use the previously mentioned materials. I’m not getting super-specific right now because you can definitely go with something different and I’ll go over what I used later in this video.
Let’s get started with actually creating this piece. Again, I have a precut 2’x4’ piece of OSB so I didn’t have to cut that down. I actually started with the frame. For this, I went with a pretty straightforward approach by just laying the board over the OSB and marking my corners. I went with an overlapping design that gave me only one exposed wood edge per corner. This takes a few extra cuts but I thought that it would look better.
Next, let’s move on to the inner slats. For this, I started out by doing a rough eyeball estimation of how long I wanted the pieces to be. Remember, there are going to be wood slats coming from both ends so just make sure to leave some empty space in the middle. I was able to pretty quickly figure out what sizes I needed and just started to rip all the boards down with little thought. Remember though, you can take away material but you can’t add it back very easily. So, if you have a bunch of long pieces, you can always cut them down. But if you have a bunch of short pieces, you’re pretty much stuck with them unless you want to try to glue everything back together or buy more wood.
Throughout my cutting process, I would stop and just gauge how much more wood I would need. In the end, it turned out that I needed everything that I purchased. But how many slats are needed is largely going to be determined by how many pieces you’re going to lay on the narrow end. If you have a bunch of vertical pieces, you may need to pick up some more wood.
Once I got everything cut and have an idea of the layout, I moved on to painting. For this, I used an 8-ounce can of Krylon Satin Black paint. I purchased this purely because it was the smallest can and the cheapest paint that I could find. I personally don’t feel that this is the type of piece that I would want to overspend to get good paint because I honestly don’t know how long I’ll keep this thing. You may be different. Just consider what this piece is going to be for. Also, I went with black because it matches the theme of the room and the house. You can definitely go with something different. Now, I will say that with the 8-ounce can, it was pretty much the perfect amount to get everything I needed covered. It was definitely close so don’t go too heavy-handed. Go light and cover everything that you know will be visible, then go back and touch up if needed later.
Now that everything’s painted and dry, we’re going to glue everything down. For my build, I just went pretty quick with the glue. For the frame, I took the time to spread it out to get good coverage but with the slats, I just ran a bead down the center and called it good. This is definitely not the ideal way to apply wood glue but I knew that this piece was going on a wall and no one will be touching it so I wasn’t too worried about my glue job. I knew that it would hold up just fine and it did. In the end, the finished piece is going to be decently heavy and I was able to pick it up by the frame with no problem at all. However, because I purposely chose wood that had a bit more character, one of the frame boards was bowed in one corner. So, I decided to hit it with a brad nail and while I was at it, I did the rest of the perimeter. This was more for cosmetic reasons and had the bow not been there, I wouldn’t have bothered because everything was plenty sturdy with just wood glue.
I do want to mention that I did use some Danish oil to darken some of the slats. This was done to give me some extra variations. I oiled probably less than 10 slats and the rest are just bare wood. You’ll have to use your own judgment and decide if you want to do anything with your project. I left most of the slats unfinished because that’s the look I was going for. For me, this is supposed to be an imperfect piece. There’s wood with knots, dents, cracks, and various other things. I purposefully did as little fixing up as possible because I wanted the imperfections and actually highlighted it by my choice of wood.
Finally, because this piece is heavier than the typical picture frame, I decided to go with a bracket to hang it up. Hillman makes this one. It is 6” long and is rated for 75lbs. This is my first time using this type of hanger but it works a lot like a French cleat if you’re familiar with that. It seems to work just fine and is holding my piece up with no problem.
And that’s about it. This is a fairly simple and straightforward build that most people shouldn’t have any problems finishing. Obviously in this video you saw me using some power tools but this is the type of project that you can get everything done with just hand tools. It’ll be a lot of extra work with cutting especially with all the slats but it can definitely be done.
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