Hardwood Flooring Inlays are hard to swallow. I digested Don Bollingers excellent book on hardwood floors and found it a great help in preparation and planning of a standard installation. I’ve got 1200 sq. foot to make pretty

Here is the rub: Across the grain (width) wood will expand and contract substantially. In length the variance is minimal. For arguments sake say it is 1 to 10 (actual ratio of length to width is greater)

Thru the local newspaper I see beautiful inlay work being done by local hardwood floor installers. Laser cut inlays are glued together like a marquetry picture and then stuck to plywood and fastened to the floor. And even from Mr. Bollingers book I see the inlay of brass and borders of wood laying in an alternate grain direction.

I wouldn’t build any of my furniture like that. Joints would pull themselves apart. I can’t reconcile that it is OK to see 1/8 inch cracks where the width of a hardwood floor meets the Inert plywood inlay. Humidity and heat should rend these beautiful designs to floating pictures in my floor. All I can imagine is the cracks filling with dirt.

Short of the prefinished plywood flooring that moves as much as a piece of CDX (you know the brands) how can you make an inlay, say 3 foot in diameter, move with the standard strip floor. All I can imagine is using the selected inlay wood of the same thickness and keep all the grain going in the same direction. Two problems I see are differences in expansion between wood varieties, and the other is gluing end grain to end grain. (that is why we make tenon joints in furniture)

Constant humidity control is not going to work as the building is 200 foot from Lake Michigan. The standard hardwood will survive the humidity swings from frozen tundra to 90 and 90. The inlay I suspect will pop like a scab.

Suggestions please.