Unwarping Wooden Tiles

[Benpipe]

Hello folks,

I'm a completely hopeless amateur when it comes to these things, so I' hoping you'll be able to give me a helping hand.

I recently suffered from a flooding which left a section of m rectangular, wooden tiles warped. The effect was to make it look lik something was trying to burst up through the floor. A number of amateu solutions (i.e. standing, jumping, putting a dictionary on them...yes, know) ended up dislodging several tiles which won't now fit back int their slots. Any suggestions as to how I could 'unwarp' the tiles an slot them back into their positions?

Cheers!

Be

-- Benpipe

[WoodYouLike]

Only time will solve your problem, sorry. What you could do the 'speed things up a bit, without further damaging the tiles is making sure al water is gone (but I'm sure you alreayd done that), ventilate as muc as possible to get the excess humidity out and hope for the best. The wood will shrink back eventually, but if all will fit nicely fla again only time will tell

-- WoodYouLike

[bigcat]

hehe. Tiles bend because one side contains more water than the other, the wetter side swells. Let them dry out and they will more or less flatten, but may not fully. If you want to ensure complete flatness, wet the concave side, let all surface water evaporate, and clamp the thing flat under serious pressure, and keep there till the wood fully dries out. A dictionary does not constitute serious pressure, 100 dictionaries per tile might be closer.

NT

[Rob Morley]

The corners are curled up because the floor is damper than the air above - a dehumidifier will accelerate the drying or you could lift them all. You could stack them up (concave to concave, convex to convex, a few layers of newspaper between to wick the moisture) and clamp them between a couple of pieces of thick board or steel plate with some threaded bar, to encourage them to dry flat, but they'll dry a lot slower that way.