creating an inlay for a wood floor

[Bob Cooper]

I'm considering building a smaller inlay for my new house - really a medallion kind of like the attached. The rest of the floor = 3/4" unfinished blonde brazaillian cherry. Any thoughts on what i should use as a backing? Anything special i should take into consideration when building something like this? My thoughts are to use Wenge, Maple, ...


http://www.decorativeflooring.com/dfImages/SquarStar350lg.jpg

[Dev Emch]

This is the ticket! Your on the right track. Here are a few tips.

1). Plane the good stuff down to slightly positive of 1/4 inch to fab up your wear layer. Then for backing or substrate, use baltic birch ply. Now, you can use either two layers of birch ply or one. That is up to you. Some guys will use an intial 1/4 inch substrate to glue up two sections of wood to form "sub" assemblies. Then, these sub assemblies are cut and fitted to make the whole medalian and these are glued onto a say a full size 1/4 inch substrate giving a full 3/4 inch thick floor. If your really good at it, you can glue the parts onto a 1/2 inch substrate in one shot. Dont forget you may need to apply lots of even clamping pressure to glue up the wear layer strips and substrate. A vac press is ideal here. Also, its nice to be a hair above your other wear layer to insure you have enough to sand out during finishing. A hair! Not 1/16 or 1/8 inch above!

2). Get in touch with the DIY network. I believe they have a website. One of the programs they run on Sunday night is Trade School. They recently had a program on where a blond girl was learning how to do russian floors at Legacy Hardwood Flooring in Denver. This show will be very insightful for what you are doing here! You may wish to see if a DVD is available.

Good Luck...

[Andy Halterman]

Have you contacted Decorative Flooring about one of those? I installed a 24" version of that exact medalion two weekends back. I can't imagine trying to make one for what they charged me. I believe I paid about $420 for the medallion and the installation template. If you have the time, sure, but I don't have that luxury. The best part is the installation template. Set it up, route out the hole, clean it up, glue and drop in the medallion. It took all of 30 minutes.

The woods in the one I bought were maple, wenge and jatoba.

Buena suerte.

Andy Halterman

Crunching numbers for quotes in Hendersonville, NC™

[Bob Cooper]

I'll check out DIY to see what they have...i'd like to see that. What you suggest makes sense. Any reason you wouldn't use 1/4 plywood and 1/2 inch finish wood?

Dev -- i've seen these for sale for around $400 but never saw mention of a template <-- i agree that that would be really useful. I've got the wood, it's just a question of how much time i guess somethign like this would take. Always looks easier than it is.

[Dev Emch]

Bob...

The standard wear layer for flooring is 1/4 of an inch. This drives the wear layer of your inlay element. Keep in mind that inlay items such as this have grain orientations changing all over the map. Different woods and different grain orientations. This can lead to expansion instability. By keeping the wear layer as thin as is practical and by using a stable material such as the baltic birch, you will minimize this instability.

Most of the items you purchase will have an inlay template with them. If you make such an item, then you will have to provide your own inlay template. These are not at all difficult to make. You can make them from the finished item along with knowing what router bit to use and what guide bushing to use as well. Some final details may have to be chiseled out where sharp corners are needed.

[John Esberg]

Bob,

I see that a while back you were trying to make a floor inlay. So, I'm wondering how it went.

I make floor inlays all the time. So I might have some neat pointers for you.

V/R,

John "DAK" Esberg

[Grant Nicholson]

Hello! I'm new to Sawmill Creek. I run an artistic cnc business.

I am working on custom designs for some hardwood floor medallions that clients have requested. This is exciting work!

What glue do you recommend?

Is there a maximum size of piece, to avoid too much expansion?

Czar Floors (http://www.czarfloors.com/) uses a 5/8" thick wear layer. Sounds risky, but would be nice to offer this degree of wear/sandability over time to clients. Thoughts?

Thanx in advance!
Grant Nicholson
Ontario, Canada