Place your 2ft x 4ft plywood backer board on a table. You will attach the strips to the plywood and later you will trim the plywood down with a circular saw to be the exact dimension of the flag. You could cut it ahead of time but we did it after.

Now here is the step that streamlines the build and makes it extra fun. Instead of nailing down all of the Stripes and then staining the red strips we use another method. Stain (unlike paint) tends to bleed. If we nailed all the stripes down now and stained every other one red, we would end up with red stain bleeding onto the white stripes. So....

Starting from the lower right corner of the 2ft x 4ft plywood backer, position the bottom stripe flush to the right side of the plywood and perfectly flush to the bottom of the plywood (make sure your plywood is square). We bought ours precut at 2ft x 4ft and it was square with 90 degree corners).

ALSO- if you want a more rustic look position the knots up or the rougher side up. You can also use a sander to rough it up or hit it with a chain or crowbar to make it more rustic looking.

Using your air nailer (or manual hammer and nails) shoot a few nails into this first bottome piece ONLY to secure it. You could optionally also apply some wood glue to the back of this first stripe to make it even more secure, but we did not). Keep in mind the bottom and very top stripes will be red and every other strip in between (in the next step).

Now position the 2nd stripe above BUT DONT nail it in. Now position the 3rd stripe (which will be red eventually) and nail it. Then put another stripe (white) but don't nail it. Keep doing this and ONLY nail/glue down the stripes that will be red. Be sure to still place the white stripes down to get the spacing perfect but only nail the red strips down.

When you get to the shorter stripes next to the Union/star area (the top 7 stripes) be sure the left side of these stripes are flush with the union rectangle piece before you nail any more of the red stripes down. So temporarily position the Union/star rectangle (dont nail it down yet) and be sure the stripes to the right of this are flush to the right side of the Union/star area.

Finally, pull out each stripe which is not nailed down. These will be all the white stripes. Set these aside and keep them stacked in order. Also remove the temporarily placed Union/star rectangle. You will be left with the bottom stripe attached to the plywood and every other (white stripe) removed. So only (soon to be) red stripes are attached.