Above are a few shots of one of the more recent floors I have done.

I installed 2 & 1/4 Select and better red oak around the perimiter, with a border consiting of 1/2 inch american walnut, 1 inch bloodwood, and 1/2 in walnut again. The inllay is bloodwood on a 45 degree angle.

The corners were all bent on site, I routed and splined all of the square edges and glued the round corners in with bostics best glue.

I finished the oak with bonas golden oak stain (walnut also) The bloodwood I used a minwax waterbased stain fruit punch red, the customer wanted a very red floor, but padduk was out of the price range. So we opted to do two different stains. In the 3rd shot you can see the celling, I carried that design onto the floor.

Everything was finished with 3 coats of bona traffic

Can't see the pictures.

We live in Naperville and are interested in getting quotes for work. Another person I tried to contact from the boards here hasn't responded.

I will IM details.

Thanks.

I tried to embed the with the [img] tags, also tried to use html, niether worked, I thought it may just have been my connection or something.

But here is the URL's to see the pictures Sorry the embedding didnt work, maybe because they are from yahoo?

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/4382b694zd870f5e0/2efcre2/__sr_/1b2cre2.jpg?phIq0rGBmasN8Lbf

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/4382b694zd870f5e0/2efcre2/__sr_/13f2re2.jpg?phYJ1rGBgW9Ulmrh

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/4382b694zd870f5e0/2efcre2/__sr_/4beere2.jpg?phYJ1rGBKAC_SGqm

They still won't come up for me. At any rate, I'm leaving you a PM as we speak.

Outstanding pics!!

Thanks for sharing

no problem, I like to show people the possibilites of wood flooring, try to help the industry out

Cool stuff! I break out in a cold sweat, when I get asked to do stuff like that.

me too, my favorite customers are the ones who say

"I want something different, Im willing to spend xx dollars, what can you do?" Havent had one custom job that the customer wasnt over satisfied about, LOVE making the neighbors jealous

WOW! How big is the room?

12x15 the border is 18 inches off all the walls with 16 inch corners (from points to make a square)

That right there is spectacular workmanship my friend. Extremely nice floor.

It is a beautiful floor and job. Will you tell us the install procedure? Field first, then feature strips then border? Or, border/apron, feature strips the install field? Cutting the curves, use a template or tramel? Bending the feature strips; make very thin 1/8" strips first and bend in individually OR? Thanks, Gary

well, there is another room behind it wich had a giant weave (lace, piano key install in it) So I had to start from the bottom of the pictue up.

I Started by using a laser to transfer the points from the ceiling to the floor, then snapped lines 18 inches off the wall. Measured from the corners to the laser drops I had made, and determined I needed aproximatley Circles with a radius of 16 inches.

I then took a 3/4 peice of CDX and made a template of the circles pretty much looked like an "L" peice of plywood with a 1/4 circle connecting the lines.

I took that pieice and screwd it to the subfloor, and began laying the field on a 45, It worked fairly well cutting the boards with a jig saw (wasnt fast but worked good) I dont mind using the router, but when I am trying to plunge cut through an extremley hard wood like blood wood, Id rather take my chances with the jig saw. It only worked out to be about 24 boards that needed to be cut anyway, and the feild took me about 3 hours to do, and I also glued the last 8 inches all the way around the border (to my chalk line) with bostichs best glue. Then I made all my cut backs for the border, and it really began to look like something.

The next day I began to prepare the wood for bending. I figured I needed peices that were almost 30 inches long to make the full curve, I took a pile of wood to the table saw, and began ripping them @ 1/8 of an inch. It worked great on the walnut, but the blood wood would crack ocassionaly, so I had to rip that at 1/16. Anyone who has ever ripped bloodwood for anything will understand the migrane and runny/bloody nose I suffered through the rest of the day with.

SO I had all my peices cut to 30 inches and then ripped accordingly 1/8 and 1/16, I layed them where they would go and grabbed my glue, I took between 4 and 6 peices at a time and glued both sides, then pushed 4 of them in to where the were suppsed to go, I used peices of plywood screwd to the floor as a wedge to get them to stay, and ocassionaly used an 18 gauge nail through the side into the field. I left them sit while I made the rips for the strait parts of the border. When they were dry, I used my fien tool to cut the ends of the bent peices on a 45 to make th cornes actually wrap around given that there is 2 different woods involved. (If it would have been one species border, I most likely would have cut them square, and done a log cabin corner. after I had the 45's cut I leyd the rest of the border in, glueing each row to the floor and subfloor, and again with my 18 gauge gun, I couldnt route and spline any of it due to the thinness of the boards in the border. But yellow glue between boards, and bostichs on the floor worked wonderfull.

Finally after a 10 hour adventure with making the border, I coudl finish the oak border. I glued the whole thing to the floor, and again made all the round cuts with a jig saw the template did not work because I made the circle bigger, SO I just cut and cut and recut until it was pefectly fitting up against the bent wood, took 8 hours to do the oak border, But I finally found a use for all the 2 foot bundels that were shipped with my wood LOL.

Now it was finally time to sand

I cut everything I could with the hummel and 60 grit paper, got it nice and flat. Then edged with 100, and final machined with 100 also, then I palm/orbital sanded the entire bloodwood section with 100 (because I was going to stian it with water based stain, and could not risk and edger swirl.) Foloowed by a double buff of the entire floor 100 and 120 grit screens.

Yay I can stain, me and one guy taped off the feild, and stained it by hand with minwax fruit punch red stain. Then peeled the tape off, and taped the walnut off, we stained that golden oak with qtips, then repeated the taping and qtips for the remainder of the border. Me and my helper took 2 hours to stain the entire room.

We let it dry for 2 days, all that work...I wasnt going to let the olil stain bleed into the waterbased stain or vice versa. We came in vacumed and rolled 2 coats of traffic 6 hours apart, then came back took some pictures, and buffed with the 180 grit strips and rolled the final coat on.


Sorry If I rambled there, I just really love the floor LOL

Exquisite,

While I thought of alternate ways of installing that design, you did an excellent job with your cuts to the raduis and are to be commended on the outcome of your floor. Thanks for sharing your techniques.

Gary

Thanks, Like I said usually I would have used a router and plunge cut the corners out, But the hardness of the wood concerned my, and didnt want the router to kick, So I did it the "safer/slower" way for me LOL.

But I am curious as to other ways to do it? I am always rying to learn new techniques and tricks Sometimes I even work with other compaines on jobs, and bring help from other companies (that I have heard/seen good things from). It isnt the cheapest way to do some of these jobs, but the things you learn sometimes, well worth it



-Jay