Finding fir for "Pattens of Light"

[Dan Oelke]

I (and my son) have been intrigued by the recent back cover of FWW with what Lael Gordon did.

Now the article said he started with quarter sawn material - but looking at the photographs and even the line-art it looks more like the material had almost perfectly flat grain in it. Has anyone else seen that article and/or figured out which it is - quarter sawn or flat sawn?

I have been poking around looking for suitable material around Minneapolis, but it appears that most of what I am finding either vertical grain trim material (4/4 or 5/4) and if I want thicker it is construction lumber type material but that seems to have a lot of curve to the grain. Anyone have suggestions on finding bigger / thicker Doug Fir material in the mid-west here?

I did pick up a 2x10 that is "ok" from home depot and we'll experiment a bit with that and post photos with what we get.

Thanks!

[J.R. Rutter]

You would probably want to try to find some really thick VG fir, like 8/4 minimum because the flatsawn edge of the board will become the top or bottom shown in the drawings. The thicker the material, the wider your strips can be which lets you start with a steeper angle and/or nets longer strips. So if you could get say a 12/4 board, that would make the flatsawn edge close to 3". You would rip that board into strips equal to the width that you need for your veneer strips to make your pattern. Then turn it so that the flatsawn portion becomes the top and bottom. Here in the northwest, we pay about $4-5/BF for kiln dried VG fir.

[J.R. Rutter]

I forgot to mention: By starting with oversized lumber, you also have the opportunity to tweak the milling so that the growth rings are more perfectly 90 degrees. Rip with the blade at an angle as needed, then square the other faces...

[david brum]

I thought the article was really interesting as well. Please post the results of your experiments. I'd love to try something similar.

[Dan Oelke]

Well I have experimented a bit.... photos coming shortly.

Short story - it worked. It absolutely worked.

Longer story:

I found a fir 2x10 at the local Home Depot that had only a few small knots and the grain was relatively flat in it. I figured for a 25 degree angle it would be about a 20" run for the 9.25" rise. Measured that out on the 2x10 and then clamped a guide to it and made the angle cut with the circle saw. I moved the fence about 5-6" over and parallel with the first cut. Then, made a 2nd cut with the circle saw.

This gave me a blank that was about 22" long and 5" wide. I carefully jointed one of the cuts I had just made. It took a few passes to get it straight. This is something you absolutely need to feed the right way into the jointer. Then I cut one end off square. I set up my table saw with a rip blade and cut 1/8" slices off the board. I didn't, but probably should have jointed between each cut. I needed to cut the one end off square so that I had something that I felt comfortable pushing against with my push stick.

I made 6 or 7 slices. Those slides I sanded their edges to kind of joint the edges. Next I made sure to mark multiple arrows on both faces of the slices so I knew which way was the andle of the cut. There were 2 slices that bowed more than I wanted so they were discarded. They probably bowed because they had a small knot in them. I then laid out a simple pattern and cut my pieces to length. These I then glued to a plywood substrate.

My glueing method was so-so. I got nice tight joints in one direction, but the other not so much. I'll have to work on that.

[Dan Oelke]

Here are 2 pictures showing the effect. Its the same board tipped away and then towards the camera slightly. The horizontal glue lines aren't so good.

And as you can guess even with careful marking of the direction, I got distracted and forgot the flip 2 of the small squares. Darn it! But I really don't care that much as this was more just a test to see if I could reproduce the effect and I absolutely could. I am so excited!

[Dan Oelke]

Here is a shot showing what the end grain of the board I was using looked like.
Then I have a picture showing how I cut the blanks off the 2x10.
And finally a pic of the blank after I made a number of slices.
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[John McClanahan]

Thanks for the photos and descriptions, Dan. I don't subscribe to FWW, but this is interesting!

John