Hmmm... picking one favourite board?

This past Friday was sanding day. Well... part of Thursday too - but it was a tough day and we are trying to forget about it.

There was one issue with this room that we were a little concerned about - the floor was not perfectly flat or level. I debated on tearing out the sub-floor, leveling and re-installing a sub-floor... but that seemed like too much work - even for me. The uneven height and gentle curve to the floor did cause problems for us in both the installation as well as during sanding. We found that many of the nested board ends were not level with the adjacent boards. Part of this is likely the nature of a herringbone floor - any variation in board thickness will cause this, but everything was likely compounded by the curve of the sub-floor.

We used a random orbital floor sander with 4 discs. It was quite a bit slower than the belt style sander, but it was the right choice given all the crossing grain. After several hours we were ready for the first coat of finish.

After much deliberation, we opted for a light coat of oil followed by a few coats of satin Fabulon. At the end of the day, I am not really interested in removing all the furniture once a year to re-apply a coat of wax and polish to the floor. Add in two active kids, and a durable film finish seemed to be the right choice.



This floor is the first time I have ever worked with white oak. Over the last half year I have grown quite used to the light straw color of unfinished white oak, so when we poured the oil onto the floor - I was taken by surprise. There was texture, color and grain in there that I had not seen nor anticipated. The floor came alive. As we sloshed the oil around it became more and more impressive almost to the point where my head exploded. The beauty of this floor exceeded my wildest expectations.

We let the oil sit for a bit before wiping up the excess and buffing everything with clean cloths.

Here are a bunch of photos.











I suspect it will be nearly impossible to pick a single favourite board - but this section right in front of the pocket door is particularly stunning.

An incredible piece of Rosewood

(and another honkin’ big plane!)

I have been working on a 28-1/2" A2 jointer for the last several weeks. The infill is Rosewood, steel sides and a bronze lever cap. The set was roughed out almost 3 years ago. When I took the first cut off the rough piece I had selected, I saw this amazing pair of black lines. They were unusually straight and I knew right away that I was morally obligated not to screw up this special grain. I immediately roughed out a set for a 28-1/2" jointer. My goal was to preserve enough of the line to carry it from the front bun all the way to the rear infill.



I started on the rear infill first and was very pleased to find that the line did not disappear as the wood started to take shape.



A long view of the rear infill...

(click on the photo for a larger view)

... and a close up of a particularly nice section right beside the handle. It is hard to see it from this angle, but there is a black line in the handle that lines up perfectly with the black line on the deck of the rear infill. The planets had certainly lined up for me!




The block for the front bun is also fit, and the grain looks to be equally stunning.



And here is what I was after - that black line running from front to back.



And a close-up of the rear infill where it terminates into the sole.



The chamfers have been “roughed” on the sidewalls and the dovetails have been ground off using a bench grinder. The next step is the front bun.

Border & banding details

Here are some further details of the inlay in the border. I decided to integrate the inlay into the floor as opposed to try and add it after the border was installed. The process worked amazingly well - here is what I did.

The above photo shows the rabbet I cut into the floor boards just above the groove. I did this on the table saw with a dado head. I debated on using a router, but the table saw was much faster (I needed 170 linear ft). The rabbet was 7/32" deep and 1/4" wide.



Here is a photo of the banding “sandwich”. I started with three, 9' piece of black dyed Swiss pear veneer. They were 4-1/2" wide and .9mm thick. I cut them in half to yield six, 4-1/2' long pieces. I then found a really curly piece of hard maple and milled three pieces that were 3/16" thick, by 4-1/2" wide and 4-1/2' long. I glued up 3 “sandwiches” consisting of a piece of black Swiss pear, a piece of curly maple and then another piece of black Swiss pear. I put a layer of wax paper between each layer and put a caul on the top and the bottom of the triple-decker sandwich.

After 24 hours, I took off the clamps. I edge jointed each layer and went to the bandsaw where I ripped off as many 9/32" wide pieces as I could. I did not re-joint each piece between strips - but the over sized height made up for any variation in the bandsawn edge. I glued each strip in, and held it in place with blue painters tape every 2" (it took 2 rolls!).




Here is a shot of the underside to see what it looks like. Note that the width of the banding hangs beyond the white oak. This was intentional so that the banding would be snug against the next piece. The photo below shows what I mean.

(note the gap between the pieces at the bottom)

Here is a photo of the banding after cleaning up the miter.




This photo is out of order, but after the banding was glued in, I took a few minutes to plane it flush with the tops of the flooring pieces. It made installation a little easier and also allowed me to make sure everything worked according to plan. Plus it made for a great photo!

The end of the floor installation

The border and thresholds are now installed - the next step is to sand and finish the floor. Thanks to everyone who has offered their opinions on the finish. Your advise has positively influenced us for sure - and we are going to go with a very simple finish. I made up a small test section of floor, sanded it to 120 grit and applied a single coat of double boiled linseed oil. Everything came alive and the ray flecks and curly hard maple look amazing.

Installing the mitered corners

Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the “miter station”. I clamped a shooting board to our kitchen island and used my large mitre plane to shoot all the mitres. The plane performed wonderfully.



We had to do some face nailing on the outermost courses of the border - the stapler could not get in that tight.




Steve and I were pretty surprised at how slowly the border went. The installation took almost as long as the herringbone did. We also realized that there were 14 mitered corners in this room - as opposed to 4 in a square space. I do not regret all the corners though - they really make the space pretty amazing.



There were a few high spots in the floor but a small smoother made very quick work of it. This should greatly reduce the sanding time.


















I used some curly quarter sawn white oak for the thresholds. These were a bit tricky to install - the new floor had the tongues facing towards the existing floor, and the existing floor had the tongues facing the new floor. I ended up cutting a dado in both edges of the threshold and pushed it in place with the adjacent white oak strip still loose. It worked very well and the joints are very tight. Oh, and to add yet another twist - the threshold had to be tapered a bit to square the two floors to one another.

At the end of day 3 (with a little bit of day 2 in there)

The floor progressed very nicely on the second day, and by lunchtime, the herringbone field was done. Well... all the full length pieces anyway. I then doubled back and filled in all the ends of the peaks and valleys with shorter lengths. All of these shorter pieces were glued to the adjacent pieces because many of them could not be safely nailed. There was a blue line around the perimeter of the room to define where the border would start. We were careful not to nail on the outside of this blue line.



When Steve and I were discussing this floor several years ago - one of the aspects that stumped us was how to cut a clean line around the perimeter. Then we saw the Festool TS55 and the lightbulb when off. This was the perfect tool for this challenging job. It was this realization that started me down the Festool slope (did I mention I bought a Domino? :)

The saw and rail system did not disappoint. In fact, it was the easiest step so far. I was a little worried about how to deal with cutting the inside corners, but they were no problem for one simple reason. Dust extraction. Because the extractor is so good, all you had to do was look to see where the blade was cutting and when to stop. What a novel idea - using your eyes to watch the cut! I was able to “kiss the line” on the inside corners and am waiting for a friend to lend me his Fein Multi-Tool to finish it off.

Here are a few views of the herringbone with the perimeter defined (and the few inside corners left to be trimmed).






Thankfully - I did not hit any nails while cutting the perimeter. The shot above shows a nail that had been placed really close to the line. We used a nail set to bury it as deep as we could and marked it on the top. After the cut, I took a look to see how close we were. If we had not used the nail set - we would have hit it for sure. Note the blue line just in front of the cut.




The next step is the border. This has been a little troubling to be honest. We do not want something that stands out too much - we are worried about visually shrinking the room. After some samples and test borders we have settled on the sample above. It is a layer of dyed Swiss pear (looks like ebony), then a layer of 3/16" curly maple and then another layer of black Swiss pear. The Swiss pear is over sized veneer - .7 mm thick. It is going to be subtle - but that is what we are after. I figure I have to make 150 linear feet of the banding.

I am going to need more clamps.


Oh, and I am still working too. I have been applying the last coats of french polish to a Desert Ironwood filled SNo.4.

At the end of day one.

There is a particular line in one of the installation documents I found that was very fitting;

“This pattern is best left to the skilled craftsmen”

My friend Steve and I have been talking about this floor for a few years now, and when he arrived at 8:30 this morning - it was strange to be finally starting. There were several false starts. Then there were a few starts that ended badly and had to be started again. But... after several hours of head scratching and talking it through - it started to come together. 10 rows in... it fell apart... again.

after 5 rows - we thought we had it

So we had some lunch and continued to talk it through. We returned with a new strategy and thankfully - it worked. Steve changed the way he was nailing and I set up a quick workbench on the mantel and took a few shavings here and there to bring everything back into square when gaps showed up. We were both really surprised how sensitive the flooring was to the order of the 3 nails in each board. What seemed to be working was to put a nail in the middle of the piece, then one on each end. Steve alternated the order of which end he did first - and that really seemed to help. Every once in a while, I would have to take 6 shavings off a board - introducing a slight taper. Neither of us could figure out what was happening to the floor to cause this, but 6 shavings seemed to do the trick. We quickly found our pace and the floor really started to come together - for real.

taking 6 passes

the center line

We figured this would take us 2 days - and we knew we were being hopefully optimistic. By 5 pm we stopped and had accomplished much more than either of us thought we would.






My Japanese hammer was the perfect tool for this job. The domed end has just enough curvature to keep from damaging the ends as they are tapped into position.

There are 261 pieces left and after doing a quick measurement and count - I think there will be just enough.


And as I was downloading these images from Jill’s camera - I found this shot. She took this just after I finished sanding the drywall. Curiously - my back does not seem quite as sore.