Troy Abbott, Timberfection
In February 2018, I was fortunate to attend an Advanced School in Tell City, Indiana USA, where we made a tiger out of mosaic parquetry (10x10x10 mm) pieces of oak. During my time there I learned many new and helpful skills.
From being in Tell City and attending the School, l was lucky to meet Avedis Duvenjian and Vartan Arutyunian from Archetypal Flooring New York and we have formed a great friendship. When the school was finished Avedis and Vartan took me back to Louisville airport. On the drive they asked me about coming back to do a special project they had coming up and I happily said yes; within two weeks I had my dates to return back to the US to help with their project.
This project was completed last year in a private house in New Jersey USA; however, my journey started in New York where I had a personal invite to go to Archetypal Flooring and had one-on-one time with Avedis Duvenjian learning more about oils. Doing things in their workshop was like being a little kid again in a candy store. Avedis put me to work helping with finishing of the panels – using special techniques on how to finish the end grain marquetry – which was great, and I was able to help them out with some techniques as well. I was able to cut out the leaves and finish them ready for installation, which was two days of fun, learning and more time in the workshop. It was great being the only person outside of their company to ever be allowed in and to do what I did.
Because we arrived to the project a day early we cleaned the entry and free laid all the panel, which would not fit so I used a few tricks with the good old Festo Rotax sander and reshaped all the panels and cleaned up all the ruffled edges so they all fitted nice and snug. The first few days of the project, we spent a lot of time hand-scraping other parts of the floor, which went through quite a few different processes to antique the floor to look like a 17th century floor. From there I was given the job to cut all the leaves into the marquetry entry – I received help with the first two leaves and kept going with the rest. The leaves were all marked out on masking tape and slowly cut out with the bandsaw. Some of the leaves were cut out with the router; all others by hand, in sections going into the solid chestnut flooring.
The entry was wire-brushed by hand to clean the edges up a little more and all the gaps were filled with Vesting hard wax oil and sawdust, and buffed in and cured with the LED light to give the desired finish seen in the pictures.
Overall, this has been an amazing experience – from doing the school in Tell City where I met people like Avedis Duvenjian, Vartan Arutyunia, Howard Brickman and Jenny Riddle who I met at the school, to working on the project, making new friends and being with such knowledgeable tradespeople. The friendships I have made and being accepted into a brotherhood of masters, was the best experience.
To be involved with this project and be the first Australian to win a National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) Flooring Award, as part of the team, is a great honour.
