Compass Rose Medallion (part 1 of 2)

We're at least 24 months behind our original schedule for completing this house, but at this point we've found a certain liberation in knowing that the schedule has been completely blown. As if we needed something else to slow us down, my wife and I decided to try inlaying a compass rose medallion in our third floor tower room. The conversation went something like this "You know a few days after we start this, we're going to wonder why we didn't just do it the simple way... I mean, this is going to add at least a week to our move in date." "Yeah, so what." So goes many of our conversations these days, and it matters not who says which piece.

The pictures speak better than any description I could write, so I've included several in this posting. I think typically, one buys or makes a medallion and then cuts a hole in the floor and inlays the medallion. We did this one piecemeal from scratch, using pieces of walnut, cherry, white oak, and maple that we had left over from the other floors in the house. (Actually, I never bought any maple for the house, but we found at least 30 board feet of it randomly mixed in with the hickory and set it aside.) The whole medallion process was improvised as we went, but the general strategy was to nail down flooring, draw the shape, and then cut the shape using the skil-saw set to a depth of 3/4". It was at times necessary to pre-cut the individual pieces on the miter saw and insert them into the pattern. Look up tedium in the dictionary and you might find a picture of me test fitting and re-cutting these little pieces of maple to fit within the rose. My knees and back are sore as I post this, but we are happy with the results so far. We can't wait to sand and polyurethane this floor. I'll have to save that for part 2.