One Board Wall Art

My first ever Instructable,

Ive had this piece of oak standing around for sometime now and it was only gathering dust so with my wife and daughter love of horses I have come up with this.

TOOLS

Pencil

Small hand saw

Hammer/Mallet

Chisel

Band Saw or Jigsaw

sander

Craft knife or Scissors

Drill and drill bits

clamps / sash clamps

MATERIALS

1 Oak Board ( or other timber)

Thin gauge wire

Glue PVA and CA

Printer ( to print required design)

Clear matt varnish ( spray )

To start off the piece of oak is 45 1/2" (1150mm)long x 9" (230mm)wide and 1 1/2" (38mm)thick and it was already pre planed. The first cuts I made were for the frame as this govened the size of the finished horse head, as it was already planed all I had to do was make 3 cuts to the thickness and clean up any saw marks, so I ended up having 2 pieces 45 1/2" x 1 1/2" x 3/4" and 2 pieces 22 3/4" x 1 1/2" x 3/4" I cut half lap joints for the corners and glued it together. while the glue was drying I cut the remining length of oak down the thickness and glued the 2 sections together using sash clamps given me a piece 45 1/2" long x 12" wide and about 6/8" thick. this is what I would be using for the horse head.

To get the horse head I found a image that I liked and printed it off to the size I wanted. I then cut out the black sections roughly to size an placed them on the 12" wide piece making sure that I had all the pieces fitting on it. when all of them were on I used some spray glue to keep them in place before cutting.

Now for the fun part I am lucky enough to have a small bandsaw which was perfect for cutting the shapes. I first cut them roughly to size and then followered the pattern of the image. There was one or two that I had to cut apart and glue back together so i could get at the inside parts.

After they were all cut I sanded off the image that I had glued on and sanded the edges being very careful not to snap any of the ends. When all the sanding was complete including the frame I came to a halt, this was the part when I realised I had no idea of how I was going to keep all the pieces of the horse head in place!. Well after a few minutes or should I say hours I came up with the final fix and that was flux core wire off my welder. I positioned it in 2 places where it was going to catch the horse head best. I did this by drilling small holes in the frame from the internal side to the back placing the wire through the internal side and securing it with a very small peg of wood and some CA glue pushed in from the back. I did the top first and then the bottom which ment I could put some preasure on the wire when pulling it through.

After that I placed the hores head face down and put the frame over the top so I could mark all the places where the wire contacted the head. I then made a small cut line on each line so the wire would sit inside and again used CA glue to hold it in place.

The final thing was the finish and I used a matt spray varnish