++CUTTING T&G FLOORING

[None]

I need to replace sections of some rotted red pine, tongue and groove flooring boards in a Victorian house built in 1888. The flooring is bone dry and had been covered with subflooring many, many decades ago.

We are going to have the flooring sanded and refinished but have to fix this condition before we do. As I have to replace about 10 boards about 24 -30 inches long, I want to stagger the joints every other piece so it will be less noticeable compared with cutting it all over one joist.

How do I cut the existing boards so that the circular saw blade kerf does not cut the adjoining boards? The boards are random width, ranging from 2-3/8 to about 6".

Thank you for your consideration.

PJPowell New Jersey

[Joe Bobst]

Use a saber saw (jigsaw to some). Grind off or cut off the blade to cut precisely the depth of the flooring. If straight cuts are vital, use an edge guide of some sort. Cheap tools won't work as well as a good Porter-Cable or Bosch in this application. Choose a fairly stiff blade with fine enouigh teeth to give you the finish you want. A circular saw is completely out of it's element for this kind of work. If you don';t have a saber saw, now is the time to get one. You'll soon find you use it more than the circular saw unless a lot of your projects involve rough framing. HTH

Joe

[dadiOH]

Seems to me you have two possibilities:

1. Use the saw but cut less than the board width on each side so that the tongue and groove are preserved. The parts that are left should be fairly easy to dig out by hand.

1. Just cut out the entire width, use a router to run slots in adjacent boards and use a pline in them and new boards.

Or, if you mean how do you *guide* the saw, just nail down a wood strip at the correct distance and run your saw along it.

-- dadiOH _____________________________

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