Pallet Wood Arrow – Extra Large

When I get a large delivery, it almost always arrives on a pallet. Not one to waste wood, I leave them outside for a few months. After they get cleaned naturally by rain and sun, I can create something with them. This pallet project is a giant wood arrow.

Build a Large Pallet Wood Arrow

I wanted to stain my arrow dark so I went ahead and stained the wood before assembly. Once the planks are joined, it would be more difficult to get stain into all the crannies. So I stained first.

I wanted 60″ tall and 10″ wide.  Lucky me!  Three planks side by side are about 10″ wide and I had plenty of wood to span the length I wanted.

Arrange pallet wood planks

After choosing the boards I wanted together, I used painters tape to keep them together. That way I could flip the whole thing over and keep the boards where I wanted them.

Then I used chalk pencils to mark the wood up with triangles so I could put them back together after separating them to drill my pocket holes.  Light colored chalk pencils show up easily on dark wood and visa versa on light wood.  

I used blue and yellow to draw marks to show me how to put the wood back together.  I used green to mark where I wanted to drill pocket holes. 

Assemble with pocket hole screws

I drilled all my pocket holes with my Porter-Cable pocket hole jig.

Then I reassembled my arrow and screwed it together.

Cut angles

I used a rafter square and a chalk pencil to mark the angles on the top of the arrow. 

Arrow tail

Then I made a tail.  I cut 45º angles on the ends of 4 sized boards creating a longer, continuous angle out of all 4.  I secured them together with pocket screws.  It wasn’t quite right yet so I cut off the outside edges — making sure there were no screws in the path of my blade!I also used a jigsaw to cut out the center ending up with what I think looks like the tail of a whale.

I used it anyway because I didn’t want to start over.

I sanded the edges before attaching it to the main body of the arrow.

Then I played around with adding wings to the top angle.  I used cut-offs from the tail and secured them with more pocket screws.

I then sanded the whole thing down thinking I’d like the more distressed look.  I decided I did not like the distressed look.

So I stained the whole thing again with gel stain — the color being a custom mixture — a custom mixture being a kind of “Sunday casserole” made of a whole bunch of cans of different colors dumped into one.

And then a light coat of black over the top of that.

That’s it ya’ll!

I’ll eventually hang my wood arrow on the wall. But I don’t want to put any holes in the wall until I decide if I’m happy with this whale tail and decide if this is the right spot.

Have you made any pallet wood projects?  I’d love to see them.  Tag me on Instagram and show off your pallet projects!