Western General Store

I was called upon to create Buckle Display Boxes for prizes for rodeo events, so I thought this would be a great project for this blog. We decided on a 3 buckle box. After studying a friend's display box, these are the dimensions I chose, but they are not firm, so you can use this as a base to work from. This project is fairly easy to make. The hardest part is choosing paint colors and decoration. Red Oak pieces were cut out. Pictured is a strange rasp that was in the wood shop which I thought I would use to distress the wood. Instead I used a wire brush on the drill press. Distressing the wood. I painted all the pieces an acrylic vintage white. I didn't worry about complete coverage. This is one of my favorite brushes. I took and old fan brush and trimmed it with scissors. I dipped the brush into the paint and removed the excess. I lightly spread on the second color (acrylic aqua). You can see the detail of the distressed wood. I applied a little glue and nailed it all togethe...

I saw a picture of a handmade rustic bookend with clavos and it gave me an idea to create western style bookends. The possibilities are endless! We have a lot of scrap ash wood in our shop, so I decided to make the bookends from those scraps. I had a set of small scroll shelf brackets and thought it would be an easy bookend. I cut out the scallop design on the scroll saw. All the bookends in this project are approximately 6.5" wide x 7.5" tall x 3" deep. The wood is 7/8" thick. The Boot and Horse cutouts are approximately 7/8" thick. I painted the wood dark brown acrylic, let dry, then antique white, let dry and sanded some of the white off. I screwed on the bracket, which held the bookend together. I traced the horseshoe onto wood and cut it out on the scroll saw and screwed the horseshoe to it. I spray painted it black. I found a few pieces of teak, glued and screwed them together and added 2 coats of polyurethane. I glued and s...

I was cutting out these shelf brackets from mahogany and noticed a pretty left-over design. Well, I must make something out of that! An idea came to me to make a Decorative Cross piece. The dimensions of this piece are 5" wide x 14" tall. I knew mahogany had a dark rich tone when sealed with a clear sealer. For contrast I squiggled some acrylic turquoise lines to look like turquoise inlay. Since this is the back, I could practice my technique. A Key hole was installed on the back for easy hanging. I put a finish on a Leather Cross , then glued on a metal Cross with regular Gorilla Glue. I've never used this glue before, and it worked great! I sawed off the little loop hanger at the top of the metal cross and filed any sharp edges. I wanted to sand some of the sealer so I could glue on the leather cross. I traced the cross onto contact paper, cut it out and taped it onto the wood. After sanding, I glued the leather cross onto the wood using...

This Cast Iron Star Stirrup was on the website, but I have not been able to find anymore. So, I decided to make one out of wood. I placed the stirrup on plywood and traced it to make a template. I traced the star section and cleaned up the lines before I cut it out on a scroll saw. Once the templates are made, I can trace this pattern onto any wood I choose. This is cut from mahogany. When I glued and screwed it together, it broke apart. I cut another one from oak and glued it together. I used a brad nail gun to secure it. I spray painted it with a textured paint. I made another one and stained it to show the wood grain. I used epoxy on this one, which seems to work better. These Star Stirrups will make great western home décor accents!

Old wood from old barns and buildings, which included red and white oak, was used for the cabinetry in our kitchen remodel. This wood is dense, heavy and very strong. The kitchen crew rebuilt some of our cabinet doors, so in this project I'm using the cabinet door reject scraps. Since the cabinet door frames had this groove on it for panels, I thought it would be perfect for making picture frames or mirrors. I cut off half of the groove on the table saw to create a place for a picture or mirror. I cut the boards to make a 16" x 20" opening. The outside dimension of the finished frame is 20" x 24". My plan was a rustic looking turquoise color and add large 2 1/4" conchos to the corners and center 3 3/4" silver clavos on each side. I glued it together and nailed it with a brad nail gun on the edges at the corners and used a staple gun on the back corners. This would look good with a coat of polyurethane, but I wanted to ...

Making wreaths for Christmas is easy and fun! I used our 12" metal Star in Ring and an 18" grapevine wreath. Nothing says rustic and natural like a grapevine wreath. I wired the star to the wreath and made a bow and wired it on at the bottom. I added pieces of greenery and tied large rustic bells to the wreath with twine. In the beginning I was going to paint the star and bells red, but I like it just like this! For a western style wreath I used a 16" grapevine wreath and cut the top out with a saw to make a horseshoe. I added a bow at the bottom and pieces of greenery. The twig balls were in a package which I bought years ago. I thought the little twig balls would be cute with the twig wreath, so I spray painted them red and used hot glue to attach. I drew the horse on plywood, cut it out on the scroll saw and painted it red. I wrote "Howdy Y'all!" with a white paint pen. I used hot glue to attach it to the wreath. What i...