Random Width Flooring: Efficient Use of a Valuable Resource
In the normal course of my business, I am sometimes asked to make flooring out of my customers’ logs. Because I mill the logs into random width boards, I would often get stuck with trying to determine the best width to make the flooring, knowing that no single width would have that great of a yield. No matter the width I chose, there would always be plenty of boards with lots of waste. If I chose 3″ wide flooring, I can guarantee you that an astonishing number of the rough cut boards would just happen to measure 8-3/4″ wide, which would yield two 3″ wide boards and one wide scrap piece, absolutely killing me.
This random width hickory floor was rough cut in 3″, 4′ and 5″ widths. I made it from trees harvested on site at Tyson Research Center in Eureka, Missouri.
In the past, I have tried to decide the width ahead of milling the logs and pick out which cut was going to be flooring and which was going to be another product, like siding. It seemed simple enough, if the board I was cutting was long and clear with no knot holes, I would cut siding, and if it was knotty and was going to produce only short pieces that were good, I would cut them for flooring. All I really had to do was sort the lumber into two piles while I was working. But, it wasn’t that easy.
Some logs would have a side that was good for producing siding, but the next side was only good for flooring. When I flipped the log over to a new side, my width was determined by how much I cut off of the last side, and it was always random. So, no matter what I did, even if I was cutting for a specific product, I would get stuck with lots of random width boards.
As I mentioned, wasting lumber kills me, and every time I ripped random-width boards down to some set width, leaving wide scraps on the floor, I thought about how to stop wasting so much wood – then it clicked. Many years ago, a friend of mine showed me a floor he made for his own house out of random width boards. As far as I know, he only did it because he thought it would look different and make his house have a special touch that would only come from someone who made their own flooring. His floor was white oak with tons of character, in three different widths. It was beautiful, and it seemed to me that I could use these random widths in some form to stop wasting wood.
I don’t remember a specific moment when I had the epiphany (though I am sure I must have had one), but I figured out that using just three widths, 3″, 4″, and 5″ would cover every width of board I could produce and always leave me with less than 1″ of waste per board.
Think about it. 3″, 4″, and 5″ wide, rough lumber is covered right off of the bat since they are already useable widths. After that is a 6″ wide board, which will just be ripped into two 3″ wide strips. A 7″ board gets ripped to a 3″ and a 4″ strip, while an 8″ board turns into two 4″ strips or a 5″ and a 3″, whichever is preferred. Any width of rough lumber over 6″ wide can be broken down in some way with just the three target widths of 3″, 4″ and 5″. By the way, these are the rough cut widths. The finished tongue and groove flooring will end up with a face about 1/2″ less in width.
This classroom at Tyson Research Center, features random width maple flooring, I also rough milled it in 3″, 4″ and 5″ widths.
Random width flooring looks different, but not too different. At first glance, the viewer only notices the beautiful wood, and then after closer inspection notices the three widths, which lets them know subconsciously that the flooring is special. It stands out because it isn’t all one width like typical hardwood flooring, and most people have never seen or even thought of using random-width flooring. But, I say, “Don’t be scared of it.” It is different and not typical, but in a good way, especially when it comes to waste.
Hickory Wine Cellar & Home Theater
It started out as a simple wine closet, a small room to be built-in the corner of an unfinished basement. My customer has simple tastes and he really just wanted an improvement on his simplified (non) design that had left his wine collection in a closet under the stairs. In it he had a wine room cooler on the floor that was running with the exhaust pointed out the semi-shut door. I don’t think it really helped the quality of the air, but it could still qualify as a wine cellar, at least in very loose terms. No matter what you call it, it needed some sort of upgrade to take its rightful place in this custom Ladue home.
As I mentioned, he has simple tastes, but apparently his wife does not. On my second meeting with him, he pulled out a photo book with a lavish French theater that his wife had found and said that since we were going to build something downstairs and he had the extra room, he would like to add a theater to the mix. It was a giant jump from where we started, but I did not argue.
The theater room quickly took shape with our new directive, and the wine cellar followed, becoming equally involved and in a French country style, which called for the racks to have more of a furniture feel. The nine pieces, the arched entry door, and the two beams in the wine cellar where made from a batch of hickory logs that I recovered from a tree service a year earlier. It turns out that about twelve months is the perfect amount of time for hickory to get very wormy and nicely spalted.
Much of the racking in the wine cellar is traditional, with ladder racks holding the bulk of the collection, but each piece of furniture displays the wine in different ways, from individual bottles to entire cases. One of my favorite little details that I commonly use now in other wine cellars is adjustable shelving. I know it doesn’t sound earth shattering, but in a wine cellar the shelves can be used flat for case storage or offset with a tilt for displaying individual bottles. The shelves have a strip across the front which is flush on top and forms a lip on the bottom, which when flipped over keeps the bottles from sliding off and crashing to the floor. The tilted shelves are especially helpful for holding and displaying odd-shaped and larger bottles that don’t fit in the other racks.
Between the theater and the wine cellar is a spot for a poker table and a back bar made from rift sawn white oak cabinets and walnut countertops with art glass windows above. All of the woodwork around the windows is made from poplar that was stained dark brown and glazed with black for an antique appearance. The walnut countertop was built up to 1.5″ thick by laminating two layers of 3/4″ thick stock together. I have done this many times and it works great (click here to see how it’s done).
The theater itself involved a lot of trim details. The ceiling is broken into three sections with painted beams and large crown molding, while the walls feature a hand-crafted plaster finish and picture-frame moldings – all of which add to the French feel of the room.
From humble beginnings to this showcase of a job, things really changed. I would have never guessed that this is how it would turn out when we started.
The French Country style comes to life with big beams and wormy, spalted hickory throughout the wine cellar.
The back wall of the wine cellar has leaded-glass windows with dark stained and glazed woodwork.
The rear of the home theater has a back bar and an area for playing cards.
Looking towards the wine cellar in this home theater shows off the recessed lighting.
An arched front with powered curtains welcomes movie-goers.
My Bow Is Made Of Catalpa (bean)
Through my sawmilling days, I have cut a lot of Osage Orange for guys that build bows. I would supply some guys with pieces to make self bows, which are bows made from a single piece of wood and others with strips of wood that they laminated together to make the bow. I gravitated to the wood for the laminated bows because it didn’t have to be as perfect as the wood for self bows and Osage doesn’t yield much perfect wood. I was often surprised by the pieces that were still deemed acceptable despite their flaws. Apparently, the laminated bows are much more forgiving.
Knowing this, and being part idiot, I decided my first bow should be a self bow. I wasn’t going to make anything special, just something we could call a bow and shoot like in the movie “Brave”. Mira, my six-year-old daughter was excited to make a bow just like Merida’s, and I was glad to have an excuse to make one. I have fond memories of shooting my dad’s bow from when he was a kid. Hopefully, Mira would share my joy.
The experience started out with a trip to the library, where we picked up a few books about archery. It didn’t take Mira long to gravitate to a Native American (the book from the 1980’s said Indian) book about bow making. She quickly found the style she wanted, along with the appropriates decorations. She had a vision. I read the book and learned how a self bow should be cut from the tree and realized that a good bow stave could be cut out of slabs from the sawmill. I thought, “I have a sawmill… and slabs.” Wahla!
The following Saturday we headed up to the sawmill. It is never as fun for Mira as I think it should be, so I quickly picked out some slabs (two cherry and one ash) and headed home. The book that I read said that the wood for the bow wasn’t critical and Indians made bows out of many different kinds of woods, not only Osage and Hickory. Mira and I decided on cherry as the main wood, and I grabbed the ash as a backup. I didn’t expect much from the ash because it is the first to get borers that would make it worthless for a bow, but I didn’t see any outward signs of problems on any of the slabs.
On Sunday we set up in the garage and I started marking wood, cutting staves and trying to hustle so Mira wouldn’t lose interest. The saw was loud and dusty and lacked much enjoyment for Mira, who spent most of the time covering her ears with my radio earmuffs (love those things, by the way). While I got in to it, Mira pulled out a long Catalpa bean that she had grabbed off of tree in grandma’s neighborhood. It was shaped a little like a bow, so she informed me that it was going to be her bow. I wasn’t happy that I had already lost her, but helped her on the Catalpa bow while mine took shape.
Mira taking a test shot.
Mira got out the ribbon and made a handle and added tassles on the end, just like the book. Meanwhile, I tried to string mine up – Snap! It broke on the end, exposing a rotten area that had no business being in a bow. After that, I strung up Mira’s catalpa bean with some fishing line and she got to work looking for an arrow. I stopped working on mine and helped her with a stick that needed to be whittled and have a nock carved in the end. We set up some cans for target practice, and from more than 1/2 yard away Mira started knocking them off – her bow worked!
Now, I was excited. I checked over my next stave carefully and started to cut. Everything went great. I cut it out with a jigsaw to rough the shape and went to string it up – Snap again! By then Mira was ready for a real arrow, and I was ready to move on. We took Mira’s arrow with no feathers and started working on the flecthings. Lucky for us, Mira collects feathers, and I had read the chapter on arrow making. I never expected to make our own arrow, but that ended up being the easy part. Just rip a feather down the middle, cut it to size leaving tabs on the ends and stick them on. We didn’t even bother gluing them and just used tape. It worked great.
After the original bow finally broke (thanks grandpa!), we grabbed some more beans and made enough bows for the kids in the neighborhood. The bows don’t shoot very far, but they shoot further than mine ever did.
What’s Going on at WunderWoods
Everyone always asks what I do. Here's the answer. Click on the photo above for a short video tour and see all of the steps it takes to go from a tree to finished furniture.