DIY Rustic Pallet Wood Flag

Hey friends! Thanks for stopping by to check out this DIY Rustic Pallet Wood Flag tutorial. I know that I didn’t create anything super new and unique here, there are pallet flags all over the internet, but I decided to make one for my front porch and wanted to share the process with you. I also just used what I had on hand, so while it looks similar to others, I didn’t follow any other tutorials on this, I just made it up as I went.

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SUPPLIES:

Boards – reclaimed, pallet or new. I cut mine to 32″ length but I’ll go through determining your length in the tutorial.
Reciprocating saw (if you need to disassemble pallets.)
Diagram of flag dimensions if you care about accuracy. (I did.)
Wood glue
Wood Screws
Weights or heavy paint cans 😉
Masking tape or painters tape
Red paint
White paint
Blue paint
Star stencil (I cut mine with vinyl using my Cricut, be sure you get the right size for your flag.)
Spray Polyurethane

PREP PALLET BOARDS:

If you have pallets, read this. If not, skip to the next step. I actually took a reciprocating saw and cut through the nails on my pallets. It is quick and easy and your boards don’t break apart. Then use a really strong power washer and some soap to clean the wood thoroughly.

Now that you’ve broken down the pallets and they’ve dried, you’ll want to remove any unwanted nails (I left many as I liked the look) and sand down the boards on all sides. Don’t worry, you won’t sand away the awesome reclaimed features unless you really try to.

ASSEMBLING BOARDS:

In order to get the right dimensions for my boards I put about five boards together and measured the width, then the length. If you just want to eyeball the measurements I’m sure no one would ever notice, but my goal was to have the dimensions as close to possible as the actual flag. This meant that the length is 1.9 times the height. For mine the length was 32″ and the height was about 17″.

Arrange the boards how you want them, then flip them all over to have the backside facing up and add two support boards to the back with wood glue.

After you’ve glued both supports, add some weight to the top of it and let the glue dry. I don’t have a special clamping table for flat pieces like this, so I just use the floor in my shop and add weights on top. It works fine because my floor is fairly level.

After the glue has dried, predrill holes into the back supports to attach them solidly to the front. I did two screws for each of the front boards.

Painting the flag:

Time to paint! I decided to paint the blue paint first. Again, I check the dimension chart and marked on the wood with a pencil where the blue section would go proportionally, and also where each stripe would go. You need to be sure the stripes are even and you want to have six stripes below the blue and seven stripes to the side. For mine, I painted this watered down blue paint and it was much lighter and brighter than I wanted, so I ended up doing another coat which darkened it perfectly.

Next are the stripes. I measured carefully and used a level to make sure the line was straight, then painted on the first white line. It worked really well, so I went ahead and taped up all the other stripes in order to paint the white paint. I put the tape where the red stripes will go.

All taped up and ready for the white paint!

Painted the white stripes and removed the tape.

After the white dries completely, go ahead and re-tape over the white paint in order to create crisp red lines. I just lined my tape up along the edges of the white carefully so the paint would completely cover the wood but not overlap over the white. Any overlap would look pink, so take your time.

Paint the lines with the red paint, then remove the tape.

Stripes are done!

Painting the stars:

I didn’t do a great job of getting photos of this step because the day that I was working on it I was in a hurry and forgot to take photos! Ugh. But in short, I found an image online of the 50 stars set up. I imported that into my Cricut software and sized it to fit the exact size of my blue section. I then used the Cricut Explore Air™ 2 machine to cut the stars in a vinyl sheet, weeded the stars out of the vinyl sheet, covered it in transfer tape, and transferred the vinyl stencil to the flag. I just stuck it on there and painted the white stars and it worked really well!

Poly:

The final step I did was the spray the flag with polyurethane spray. I wasn’t too worried about protecting this because it’ll just be hanging on the wall or sitting on my front porch, but I wanted to cover it a little, so I added two coats of polyurethane spray.

All finished!

As you can see there are tons of nail holes and the boards are a little rough, but that’s honestly exactly the look I was going for. A rustic, used, yet awesome looking flag. I absolutely love it!

Here’s a close up of the details, the stars and the really cool saw marks from the pallet wood.

If you like this DIY rustic pallet wood flag project, please pin this image to Pinterest!

Thanks again for stopping by and reading my pallet wood flag tutorial! Feel free to comment or ask questions, I’d be happy to help! Let me know if you make yourself a USA Flag this summer!

Check out some of my other reclaimed wood projects!

Thanks friends! Keep building!