Home Made Wood Christmas Tree Star
Last year I made a wooden Christmas Tree star for our family. We liked it so much that this Christmas I made more to give as gifts. Above are the three stars I made this year, below is a picture of our star on our tree.
Materials Needed For the Star
- Two 1-inch thick boards made from different types of wood.
- The stronger the grain, the better.
- I used one red oak, and one maple.
- One 8x11x1 inch board will yield 3 stars worth
- White glue, and lots of it. Most wood glue usually dries yellow, so don’t use that.
- A saw. I used a table-top scroll saw
- An electric sander or sandpaper
- A drill with a 5/8 inch bit
Here’s the pattern I made as a PDF for printing, or as an SVG file if you want to edit it (using Inkscape or Illustrator).
Glue both boards together and clamp or weight them until the glue is completely dry. Glue the pattern on top of the boards.
Cut along each line and set aside each whole triangle segment. Remember, the segments are 2 inches thick since the boards are glues together. Cut slowly.
Flip half of the segments over and glue them face-to-face so that each half of the star point has the opposite grain as pictured below. Clamp each pair of segments together so that you end up with 5 points, each point made of 4 pieces of wood.
I had a difficult time cutting exactly straight so there are some gaps between segments. Even with the gaps the star ends up looking nice in the end so don’t worry about them too much.
When they’re dry, you should have a bunch of star points that look like this. The blue line below indicates where the next cut needs to happen.
Brace up the point using a leftover triangle from the first set of cuts and watch those fingers.
Here’s my 15 star points ready to be glued. I laid them on wax paper so that it’d be easy to peel them off when the glue dried.
I used leftover pieces from the first cuts again to support the ends of the star points while they were drying.
The stars need to dry really well at this point. Sanding and drilling come next. If the glue in the middle of the star isn’t dry, either of these activities could break the star apart.
I probably would’ve used my palm sander, but I lent it out so the belt sander was going to have to do the trick. I clamped it upside-down to the table and locked the trigger on. It actually worked really really well. I will do this again next time.
Sand off any remaining paper from the pattern, and round the corners and edges to taste.
Carefully drill holes most of the way through the star. I started with a 1/4 bit and worked my way up to a 5/8th inch.
Stain and protect the stars however you want. I used a light yellow stain and shellac.
The stands I made are just a simple square of wood routered, with a dowel stuck in the middle. I figured that some people might already have a Christmas Tree star they liked, and this way they could display it on a mantle or something instead.
If you make some stars let me know!
