By

V Susan

Hi! I'm Susan. I am passionate about woodworking, general DIY and home improvement. If you'd like to connect with me or talk about something you like at mellowpine, drop me a mail at susan@mellowpine.com

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October 29, 2021

After the overwhelming response of the last wood wall art project, we decided to make one more geometric wood wall art project.

If you missed it, check it out here- DIY Geometric Wood Wall Art.

It seems we just can’t get enough of wall art projects.

So for this one, we chose an abstract design with a white and dark brown combination.

To add a bit of twist to the project, we decided to do wood burning to achieve the dark brown finish.

For those in the know, this technique is called Shou Sugi Ban and is a really popular Japanese wood preservation technique.

All you need is a flame torch to do the wood-burning.

Build Video of the Wood Burned Geometric Wall Art

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Things You Need For This Build

Materials

1 x 2 Furring Strips– 40 feet (36 ft. is the exact requirement but it usually comes in 8 ft. pieces)
¼” Plywood
Wood Glue
Varathane PU (Water based PU) or Homemade Paste Wax

Tools

Plan for the Geometric Wall Art

DIY Geometric Wall Art Plan — DIY Wall Art Plan

Please note the difference in dimension between nominal size and actual size. For e.g., 2 x 4 is the nominal size while 1-½” x 3-½” is the actual size. This is a standard convention.

How To Build The Wood Burned Geometric Wall Art

Step 1: We used 1 x 2 furring strips for building this wall art.

Those are available on Home-depot (Buy here).

We already had 2 x 2 ‘s with us so we sized them to the required dimensions.

This was done on a table saw. Then we ran each piece through the planer to make it level.

This is not necessary if you bought lumber from the store which is planed.

Note: If you are buying regular lumber, cut the 1 x 2 lumber into 24-inch length strips first.

Then cross-cut each piece on the miter saw to divide it into two pieces as per the plan.

Only one piece in each pair is to be burned using a torch.

Ripping a 2x2 — Making the 2″ by ½” pieces

Planing the pinewood pieces — Planing each piece using the planer

pinewood strips — All pieces planed and stacked

Step 2: After the strips were made, we decided to make the plywood base for gluing on the strip pieces.

We used 8 ft. x 4 ft. plywood with ¼” thickness bought from home depot.

We used the circular saw to cut out a 17″ x 26″ rectangular piece from the sheet of plywood.

The size of the wall art is 18″ x 27″ so the base plywood piece (17″ x 26″) stays within the wall art frame.

But you also want the base to have a firm hold over the wall art and thus it cannot be too small compared to the wall art size.

Setting the clamp for cutting the plywood

Step 3: Since we used scrap pieces of wood we had instead of regular store-bought lumber, we using the speed square to mark the required lengths of each piece.

We expected the wood burned pieces to warp a bit at the ends, so we left some extra length on those pieces for chopping off after burning.

Step 4: We then cut out the plain lumber pieces (no-burn part) on the miter saw as per the plan.

Step 5: Now that the no-burn pieces were ready, we moved on to the burning part.

Now, we really love Shou Sugi Ban projects, but we didn’t have much experience doing those.

So we were really nervous when doing this step.

But since we were using scrap lumber we felt a lot more confident playing around with it.

So we burned the pieces using a flame torch at high intensity.

At first we tried burning multiple pieces together by placing them in a row.

But we soon realized that the burning was non-uniform when it was done this way.

The centerpieces were getting burnt excessively and it was difficult to burn uniformly. So we changed our strategy and then on burned each piece individually.

burning pine wood piece — burning multiple pine wood piece

Note: Burn with a uniform hand motion at uniform speed. Each part of the wood must get the same amount of heat to get a uniform finish. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a patchy finish.

Step 6: We then used a wire brush to scrape the burned material to reveal the final finished dark brown color.

We didn’t really want to burn it to a charcoal black color, so we decided to stop at a deep dark brown color.

Step 7: We then sized the burned pieces on the miter saw to cut off the edges that we left on deliberately in the earlier step. Luckily, there was no warping in any piece after burning.

Wood pieces for wall art — Unburned wood pieces for wall art

Step 8: We then sanded the unburned wood pieces down to 220 grit for finishing.

Note: Do not sand the burned wood pieces as the wood-burning is only skin deep and sanding will reveal the unburned white part of the wood. Use only a wire brush to smoothen it.

Step 9: Now that all the pieces were ready, we were set for the glue up. Before doing the glue up we tried a dry fit and the pieces were joining together well.