Advice - DIY Desks

[Dave Plowman (News)]

*Not* a veneer - but solid wood flooring. It's about 7/16ths thick. But made up of smaller bits glued together. You can use ply as a base. Or blockboard.

[GMM]

It seems to me that this is pretty much the same as making joints in kitchen worktops. For these, biscuits and clamps work very well and are very easy to do with a router. The tricky part about the long tongue would seem to be making sure the fillet is a good fit, so perhaps there's a compromise of routing a groove along each board using a biscuit joint cutter, then stacking the biscuits along the groove.. Be a good idea to hold the boards together 'laterally' though, somehow (if you got some of the Ikea worktops, a kitchen clamp would be just the job as they're thick enough.)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Just to add that's how some 'wood' flooring is made anyway.

[The Medway Handyman]

I'm only talking from my experience. A house I was working in had wardrobe doors made from 8' x 2' contiboard covered with T&G cladding across the 2' width. Each strip had been glued down with no more nails.

It contracted so badly the contiboard had taken the shape of a longbow, even to the point of pulling a hinge out on one door.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Contiboard? That's what I'd call melamine faced chipboard. And T&G cladding is normally the cheapest ever whitewood. I can imagine the two reacting very differently to the ambient room conditions.

All I can say is I've done what I said without problems.

[The Medway Handyman]

Then we shall agree to differ in a civilised way, like the gentlemen we both are :-)

[Roger Mills]

I assume that the T&G must have had a high moisture content when fitted, and shrank when it dried out.

Even so, I would have expected it to come apart at the tongues and grooves rather than staying together and bowing the contiboard.

[The Natural Philosopher]

T & G is DREADFUL

I put some up and painted it..come the winter there were 2mm white lines where the T's had shrunk out of the G's. In summer they go back again.

1% movement across the grain, particularly in tangentially sawn softwood, from summer to winter, is not uncommon.

Oak IS better. My enigeenered laminate floor made of softwood ply with a

5mm oak veneer, only moved about 5mm over 5 meters. So 0.1% total.

Chip and contiboard would be more or less impervious to moisture..so the combination is very likely to bow.

[The Medway Handyman]

No More Nails had been used...

[Rod]

But was the T&G applied to both surfaces?

[The Medway Handyman]

No, just the front. Each piece had been glued to the contiboard & had glued T&G joints.

[Rod]

Right - might not have been quite so bad if both sides had been done - they might have managed to balance each other - or perhaps both would have peeled off?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

IMHO ordinary PVA wood glue will do a better job. For less money.

[stuart noble]

I've never known contiboard bow unless it gets wet. Come to that I've never known cladding to bow, mainly because it's usually pretty dry by virtue of its thinness (is that a word?)

[The Medway Handyman]

I'd agree - I didn't do the job, I was called in to (amongst other jobs) try & straighten the doors out - and failed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The mistake was gluing the T's & G's.

[Roger Mills]

That probably explains it. I assumed that the boards were just stuck to the conti - *not* to each other as well!

[gilli]

Hello, I have had good results with veneered ply which comes in useful long lengths and widths in various veneers from a specialist ply supplier in your area. Remains only to make a nice job of gluing on some edge material also supplied by the specialists to match. Looks good...even works nicely with curved fronts or ends. Good luck.