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The project was for the home office of an old friend. “He’s a financial advisor, so he liked the idea of a compass rose that’s showing directions,” Vivash says. Vivash, who runs Paris, Ontario-based J.L. Vivash Custom Wood Floors Ltd., saw it as the perfect chance to use the Shaper Origin CNC machine he’d been experimenting with. "I've been learning programming ... and I really wanted the opportunity to make a cool medallion with that,” he says.
He first installed the elm flooring and included square wenge dowels for a rustic look. The wood, which was reclaimed from barn beams, has a storied past in Ontario. "The barns are usually over 100 years old and have really, really big timbers,” Vivash says. “So we're guessing that the wood was probably already 100 years old when it was cut down to be used in the barn.”
Vivash created the compass rose design using an AutoCAD design program and worked with the client to develop a design with multiple bands in the medallion.
Vivash planned to incorporate elm and wenge in the compass rose, and when the homeowner mentioned some cherry had recently been cut down on the property, Vivash knew he’d found his third contrasting species for the medallion. “I always think it's nice to bring in something to personalize anything in the floor,” Vivash says.
Vivash fabricated the medallion in his shop using the Origin to cut the lettering and curved pieces, all of them 5/16 inch thick. “I had to go down to a ⅛-inch router bit because it's a little more intricate,” Vivash says.
He began cutting all his straight pieces with the CNC machine, but then discovered that if he made one piece with the Origin, it was then faster to simply copy them on a table using a Festool track saw.
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On site, Vivash used a router and Baltic birch plywood template to cut in the 40-inch-wide medallion. He installed the ½-inch-thick Baltic birch plywood base, troweled it with adhesive and installed the 96-piece medallion over it.
Vivash sanded the medallion with an edger before sanding the entire floor with a multi-disc sander. He then applied two coats of oil finish, one of them with a “smokey” color added to accentuate the flooring’s wormholes and circle-saw marks. From start to completion, Vivash estimates the medallion took a solid 35 hours to complete, although he's confident he can get that time down to 25 or 30 hours for his next attempt with this first project under his belt.
While the storied elm wood has been given a new future, Vivash says he’s also excited for the creative opportunities ahead with his new technique.
"I've been doing wood floors for quite a while, learning all the hand-cut methods and everything else,” says Vivash, “but I think the possibilities in CNC cutting, if you look at some of the work that Daniel Antes does, it's just a whole other realm of now using your creativity not only with your hands, but with your mind and a computer, and coming up with a whole other level of creativity.”
Suppliers:
Adhesive: Bona | CNC machine: Shaper Tools | Finish: Loba | Multi-disc sander: Pallmann | Saws: Festool
