Welcome back to the Cuban Redneck #DIY channel, where today we will be making a rustic wood American flag. There are many ways you can show your love and respect for our country, and nothing speaks louder than standing up for our anthem and displaying an American flag in your home or business. Politicians have done away with the pledge of allegiance in schools. That way, it is easier to disenfranchise the youth. However, by displaying an American flag, we can remind them that this is one nation under GOD with liberty and justice for all!

The most popular type of wooden U.S. flags you find online is the wood burned American flag variety. I wanted something that looked aged and a little more rustic for this project. It would have been easy to get a piece of plywood or MDF, put some tape or stencil over it, and spray an American flag onto the wood, but if you know me at all, you know, that is not me. Many YouTubers chose soft white pine for the simple reason that it is very easy to tool and finish. I decided to use fence boards. Something considers by many carpenters junk wood, but I wanted to make this flag look like it went to hell, survived, and came back!

More important, we are going to make a flag that is up to specs! Yes, I don’t think that many people know that there are ratios and specifications when it comes to making a U.S. flag. The dimension for the American flag is derived from the size of the stars. I used laser cut wood stars I purchase online, and here are a few links to the overall size of the flag based on the size of the stars.

Making a Rustic Wood American Flag

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted this wood U.S. flag to look rustic and distressed. In fact, I originally wanted to make a waving flag, and that is the reason I purchased the chainsaw grinder wheel. I used the tool to create a shredded look at the end with limited or no success. Anyways, whether you are making a wood burned American flag, a rustic wood American flag, or a painted one, it all boils down to the size of the star! If you Google (U.S. flag Calculator), you will discover several tools and apps to calculate a wood U.S. flag’s correct dimension. I chose omnicalculator.com because it allowed me to reverse engineer the flag design from anyone dimension!

Once you have the dimensions for the stripes, I suggest you cut the length first. I used my miter saw to cut the length, and the General International saw to cut the width for efficiency, but if hard-pressed, I would have don’t this with just the circular saw sled or even a jigsaw. With all the pieces cut, it is time to start painting. I opted for a staining technique rather than paint because I wanted the wood’s roughness and detail to show through. For pigment, I chose Apple Barrel acrylic paint from Walmart. These U.S. Made $.50 pains are quite popular with those in arts & craft and lure makers. To turn this from paint into a stain, you need to dilute them with alcohol to a very watery consistency. Probably a 60 to 70% alcohol to paint ratio.

To painting the stars, I stuck them to a piece of painter’s tape and sprayed them at a distance with white gloss enamel (Rust-Oleum X2).

After having all the pieces painted, it is time for assembly. For some reason, I chose an extra difficult way of doing this. That being butt joining the pieces with just glue! Know that I have added alcohol to my wood glue to accelerate the curing time, but that was dumb on my part! The best way to do this is to cut a 1/8 or 1/4 inch substrate of plywood, MDF, or even hardboard to your flag’s overall size and glue the pieces to the substrate. Not just to each other. Even though the edge shredding was somewhat of a failure, I was delighted with how my wood American flag project came out.

When it comes to the stars, I had to do a little bit of math, and that is because the online calculator gives spacing between the stars, not the center! Anyway, after dividing the canton’s width by eleven and then by five and six, I came up with my dimensions. I transfer those to a metal piece to make a temple, and when with that!  As with the rest of the pieces, the stars are just glued in place. A small dab of glue will do, and although I started with a bottle, I quickly changed over to a Q-Tip for a more precise amount of glue.

As I said in the video, I know that many people are not up to making an American wood flag, but know that there are many Americans out of work and needing help who do these types of projects for a living or as a side income. You can help them a lot by purchasing one of these flags. Check out your local farmers market, flea market, or even online market places, but please make sure that the American flag you buy is made in the USA!