Inside the Pennsylvania WoodMobile, a walk-through diorama of the state's wood resource industries in a 40-foot-long trailer, is a wood floor shaped like a meandering forest path.
It was designed, constructed and installed by six-time Wood Floor of the Year winner Mark Scheller, who developed a new method for molding and placing free-form curves in the process. The traditional method of constructing a mold to shape flooring strips and a template to cut the existing wood floor to fit the shaped wood is repetitive and time-consuming, Scheller says.
So he found a new way. Scheller constructed an original mold inspired by a tool that architects use to draft curves.
The tool, which Scheller refers to as an infinite curve, did double duty, first as a mold for the wood floor and then, conveniently, a perfect ledge upon which a router could ride and cut out a template of the graceful curves. It worked so well that Scheller estimates he spent a third as much time cutting the template as he would have using the traditional method.
The result premiered when the WoodMobile was unveiled at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January. Its wood floor path splits the trailer into two educational sections, one that explains forestry stewardship and the other that displays the myriad products made from wood.
The WoodMobile was paid for entirely by the private forestry industry in Pennsylvania. It will start touring the state this month, educating students and adults alike three to six days a week, until its season ends in October. Says Wayne Bender, a hardwood development specialist who had the idea for the first WoodMobile back in 2002, "The floor this year, it just takes people by surprise. They are just shocked by its beauty."
