Wooden Banksy Wall Art

This week I participated in the WoodArtChallenge through Instagram with a BUNCH of my fellow creators and I created this piece of Wooden Banksy Wall Art inspired by everyone's favorite street artist, Banksy. The challenge for this project was pretty simple and open-ended, create a piece of square wooden wall art. Naturally my brain started churning with ideas and I ultimately settled on this iconic image for my project. This project incorporated a few new things for me including my first epoxy inlay. Check out the video to follow along and see how I created this piece AND make sure you check out the links at the end of the article to check out some of the other projects created by other creators.

To get started with this project, first I built the panel that would serve as the main body of the build and be the surface I'll CNC my design out of. I started by resawing some 7/4 Maple on the bandsaw into pieces just under 3/4.

Then I ran them through the planer to uniform thickness about 5/8" thick. Next I ripped them on the table saw into strips. I did this because I wanted to vary up the grain pattern for the glue up. The overall dimensions of the rough panel was 16"x16". For the glue up of this project I used my Aluminum Rockler clamps and Titebond 2 wood glue.

Once the glue set up I scraped the excess and then planed the panel to it's final thickness of 1/2". I had to use a friend's planer because my planer can't handle a 16"x16" panel.

About a year ago I purchased an Iconic CNC machine along with the rest of the guys from SoCal Woodshop. It's been a tremendous tool to have and I've only just cracked the surface with it. I haven't had much time to incorporate it into projects but I'm hoping to do more of it in the future. This was my first attempt at cutting an inlay on it. The machine uses Vcarve to program in tool paths which can be created from nearly any image. It's a really intuitive, and powerful workflow once you get used to it.

The epoxy I used for this build is the West Systems Epoxy and the Trans Tint dyes. I used a combination of black, yellow, and blue (although I wish I had used a brighter color with the yellow for the flowers). The blue got a little lost and looks almost black. The two part epoxy system works really well and sets up in few hours. After that it's able to be sanded down flush with the panel surface.

For the frame around the panel I used a piece of walnut that I cut into 1 1/4" strips and turned edge-wise. I cut a 1/2" dado that was 1/4" deep into all the sides to house the inlayed panel. Then I put a small chamfer on the inside edge to give the frame a finished look. The panel insets so there is a cavity behind to add mounting hardware/picture frame hanging hardware on the back. Once the pieces were cut, I glued the miters and used my Bessey strap clamp to hold everything together.

To finish this project I felt it was only appropriate to use a spray can polyurethane seeing as how the whole thing is kind of an homage to an artist whose primary medium is spray paint. Normally I don't use spray polyurethanes that often but I made an exception this time. If you want some more tips on how to finish your woodworking projects, make sure you check out my Idiot's Guide to Wood Finishing.

Thanks for checking out this Wooden Banksy Wall Art project. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel at YouTube.com/mrfixit