Ode to the Floor Part 1

The floor has come with many mixed feelings and emotions. As many of you think of floors there is really not a whole lot to them and in need not very exciting, nor do we care. This floor could probably have the same kinds of emotions with it because most will not notice it nor look at it and it is actually covered by a mat. I know some of you are thinking then why work so hard on it? Believe me Grandpa you may have been on to something with doing the floor as one solid piece. But I know when it is all said and done I will love my floor and it will be a good solid foundation.

Because the floor has to be two inches thick and you cant get two inch think wood. We spent the better part of almost a day and a half gluing together pieces and then planing them back down. We first thought maybe we wouldn't have to and we could just do it an inch and seven eighths, but the floor wouldn't line up if we did. The reason it took so long is because the main boards that run front to back are almost 70 inches long. So it pretty much took all of my Father's clamps to glue them together. Se attached pictures...

All glued together

The piece that goes up under the cowl

Overall piece that connects everything together

For the floor they have cross pieces to help give it more structural strength. So we had to cut grooves in the boards so that they could fit together. Here is a photo of the cross piece...

There are three of these that go in the overall piece and one that goes on the piece that goes under the cowl.

Luckily Dad used to be a member of a wood club for the company he works with. Because of this he acquired a few router bits that have come in handy for a few of our operations including cutting the grooves. Here are a few pictures of what they look like all cut out...

First we measured out where we needed each hole. Then to help take out some of the meat of the wood we drilled several holes so the router bit didn't have to cut so much, saving it for future projects. Then true to my Father's nature he made a nifty jig that worked perfectly for cutting the groove. We used a half inch bit and a plunge router and the results are the bottom picture.

With having to plane these boards back down we ended up producing four more bags. Man I wish we could put these back together. If we make too many more bags I might have to charge for rides.