Perusing through Pinterest for pallet wood projects, I found some varied wall hangings that had a cross in it. I decided that I wanted to create one myself.
When using pallet boards, you have to decide if you are going to keep the part that has the nails or nail holes. This project is great for keeping the holes and/or nails.
The top and bottom board need to be a full pallet board of 40 inches. The rest of the boards can vary in length as long as there is an empty cross created.
My measurements were kind of all over the place because I used some left over pieces from other projects. It is helpful to number the boards in pencil on the top edge of the board and then refer back to a sketch like above to know where each piece goes. I made the mistake of writing on the face of the board and then went and sanded them off.
You do have to be cognizant of the fact that you have to be able to add braces to the back on both sides of the cross. If a board on the left is too short, you may not have space for the brace.
Above is the picture of my second project prior to burning.
The next step would be to sand the boards at least on the good side. When flipping over the boards to add the braces, I suggest you start at the top and work your way down. The boards in each row will basically switch places. Once again, as long as the cross looks like an even cross you are good to add the braces.
I used thinner pallet boards as the brace pieces in the first one I made. In this second version, I used scrap that I found in the garage that is thinner. I used wood glue first and then nailed four nails into each brace on each board to make sure it would hold. Some of the pieces were a bit curved so adding the extra nails ensured it would stay together.
After the project is put together, you could choose to torch it or stain it or just leave it as is. For mine I decided to burn words into it.
I traced some letter stencils that I have and then used my wood burner. I first outlined each letter thinking maybe I would leave it at that.
I decided it didn’t stand out enough so I burned in each letter. The hardest part was reaching around and leaning over the wood to burn.
I finally decided last week on the words that I would burn into my second cross hanging. I realized from the last one that the words had to be balanced on the boards so I needed either a four or six word passage. A suggestion was made that, because of the cross, the word “love” had to be in it. A bit of searching and I came up with “For God so Loved the World”. A church hymn that I have sung and it relates to Christ dying on the cross. Perfect.
For the words on this one, I typed out the passage in Microsoft Word using Harrington font with a font size of 350. I cut out the individual words and lined them up on the wood making sure they were centered to each other. I started with the top word because there was a knot that fit perfectly in the hole of the “o”. I taped each piece down on one side to keep it from moving.
Next, I slid the carbon paper behind the paper and traced over the outside of each letter.
From there I burned the outline of each letter and then began burning in each letter.
Here is the end result.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).