How to clean up old tongue-and-groove flooring before reinstall?

[mikep7777]

Does anyone have advice on the best way to clean up the tongues and grooves on old hardwood flooring?

I'm redoing a bathroom in my house. The original maple T&G flooring, which had been covered over in the 50's, was in pretty good shape, however there were a couple areas with significant damage, and a couple areas where the joints had separated. We decided to remove the flooring, clean it up, install a new subfloor, and then reinstall the maple.

I want to clean up the tongues and grooves before I reinstall the wood so that we have relatively tight joints (I don't want/expect this to look like a new floor, but I don't want 1/4" gaps.) The T&G edges of the wood are caked with dirt that fell into the joints through the years.

I was thinking of running the boards through a shaper to recut the edges (after running it under a metal detector...), but I'm worried that the dirt and grime will kill the cutter instantly. It's only about 60 square feet of flooring.

Any idea if the shaper will work? Should I instead just use something like TSP and a scrub brush to clean everything up? Any other ideas?

Thanks,

-Mike

[dpb]

...

Carbide would last for a while, but matching the original precisely would be hard. My suggestion is wire brush in hand drill, holding the flooring in a vise. For no more than you have, this won't be too bad at all. Did much more than that from the old barn while doing the restoration...

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[<josh]

I&#39;d cut a hand scraper to the appropriate profiles for the tongue and groove. Cut it with a Dremel or hand files, scrape the length of the boards, you&#39;ll clean the contact surfaces with a minimum of wood loss.

[Father Haskell]

Blast the dirt out with an air compressor nozzle. Anything left can be scraped clean with a utility knife.

[dadiOH]

Not unless you have a special cutter. T&G flooring is NOT regular T&G...the tongue does not go all the way into the groove and the area below the T/G on adjacent pieces do not touch. Allows for expansion/contraction.

[willshak]

on 9/3/2007 8:34 PM [e-mail] said the following:

Wood file? Sanding block? Scraper, Screwdriver blade?