Advice needed..SPF Flooring. Is it doable?

[Gino]

I'm very interested in doing a SPF floor. I would like to use 1x4 stained in varying translucent greens. The cost of unfinished hardwoods for this is huge.

I realize the wood is very soft but for my purpose dents and marks add to the appeal. As long as the floor can be kept clean. But I'm not sure about the best way to finish it so the clear finish 'bends' and doesn't crack.

Also because of 'shrinkage' what would be the best way to put this down. T&G would be tough for me to do. Running splines is pretty easy though but will they work. Can I use glue? If I do get cracks what product could be stained green and used to fill them?

I've never put down a wood floor of any type so this could be a real adventure. It not a huge space so if it screws up covering it with carpet would be no big deal.

[George]

One word - splinters.

[Gino]

I need to read the words that tell me how to resolve that. I was raised in a very old dilapidated house with painted pine floors. Most of the paint was gone and I don't recall getting splinters.:)

[Wilson Lamb]

[Dave Jackson]

I put 1x12 pine flooring in our colonial homes (per the GC's spec) and ship lap the boards. A ship lap is basically two rabbets, which overlap each other. The 1x12's are run through a shaper and then the edges are eased slightly with a pass or two with a block plane along the edges. the boards are then face nailed with these 2 1/2" cut nails:

If you are careful about selecting your boards, (or have a jointer) any gaps between the boards can be minimised, or just left alone if you like the "aged" look. Easing the edges with a plane will give a shadow line which can also help hide small gaps If you're looking to blind nail and want tight fitting boards, T&G is the way to go. So far, the 3 coats of water based poly (again spec'd by GC, I personally prefer oil based) has held up with out customer complaints. Hope this helps--dave

[Gino]

No jointer, but I get good results with my router . Small gaps are just fine and a shadow line would be great. I'm concerned about minimizing shrinkage. My drying method is to store lumber high up under my 10 foot ceiling in a 65 degree shop for a couple months. How long is long enough for construction grade. The lumber comes KD and this is a dry area. I really don't want to invest in a moisture meter.

Thank, it does. Can you color water based poly. I would like a yellow tint.

[Dave Jackson]

I would suggest storing it in an environment very similiar to the environment the boards will be installed into. If possible, i put the flooring in the house in which it will be installed and leave it alone for two weeks or so for acclimation. So far, no major problems, even with T&G oak, etc. As far as coloring the poly, I've never done this, but you certainly can experiment and report back to the roup! --dave

[firstjois]

Does Minwax make a yellow tint? They make several colors.

Josie

[Silvan]

Southern Pine Fir

Spalted Peach Featherboard

Spruce Paper Ficus

I can't figure out what SPF stands for. Some kind of softwood by the rest of the post.

[Morris Dovey]

Spruce/pine/fir

[Morris Dovey]

I realize that this isn't the direction in which you were proceeding; but would like to mention that one of the most interesting floors I've seen was done with 2x4 pieces set over concrete with only the end grain showing.

The pieces weren't glued or nailed but were kept well waxed; and although it looked new, I was told that the floor had been in use for over twenty years.

[George]

S*F. Spruce and fir.

Both feature hard latewood and very soft earlywood. Every annual ring is a splinter in the making. There is no answer except not to wear the floor.

Eastern white p>

[Fly-by-Night CC]

Where did you see this floor?

It sounds a lot like the Ponderosa Pine floor in the Flagstaff, AZ City Hall/Municipal building - installed around 1982. When I lived in Flag, the local paper ran an article on the construction and upkeep of the floor. As I recall, the blocks were secured and then a slurry of sawdust and linseed oil was applied, much like grouting a tile surface. Seems there was also some mention of concern with the unevenness of the surface and ladies high-heeled shoes - there was certainly a shallow dimpled texture when you look at the reflection of the entryway off the floor.

[Fly-by-Night CC]

I've got an old (c.1920) home with Douglas Fir floors. They appear quartersawn and rarely give up splinters. I can only remember one or two in the nearly 10 years I've lived here. (One of these days I've got to tackle a refinish job on the floor, but that'll have to wait for all the

*-&%ing! white paint to be stripped off the fir baseboards, door trim & headers, built-ins and crown moulding. Fortunately the folks who painted didn't do a great job of sanding the original varnish so it's not worse than it could be.)

[Morris Dovey]

At an IBM lab in Kingston, New York - in a /huge/ space where I was told every System 360 ever produced had been wheeled in for final product test. I'm not sure for what the area was used before that, or how it's being used now.

I did ask about the construction; and remember that after all the blocks were in place, the floor was sanded flat before treatment. There were a lot of 360's produced; and that means a /lot/ of casters. I was amazed that the floor still looked new in the days of the System 370. I'd guess that the maintenance crew took a lot of pride in their work.

There probably wasn't much high-heeled traffic in that area.

[George]

Quartersawn, and not a fir. Sounds like a good rebuttal.

[George]

Standard factory floor until at least the 20's was end-grain blocks.

[mp]

Probably a lot of Hush Puppies and pocket protectors.

[Charlie Self]

Morris Dovey notes:

I've seen similar end block floors in factories where a whole lot more hits the floor than a computer's fairly easy rolling wheels. Look up and see transport systems hauling plate metal parts. See others down on the floor welding away. See others...well, you get the idea. The floors I've seen may have been coated with linseed oil, but they were set into a mastic base, and, in at least one case, the floor was well over 30 years old (I wish I could recall exactly where the place was: not too far from Kingston, because I lived in Westbrookville at the time. I was working on an article for Pop. Science on a particular type of wood stove, and the guy welded one up on the factory floor--it was not a stove factory, though; he worked there doing something else and was allowed the run of the welding gear for his own projects. Long time ago, about '75 or so).

Charlie Self "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Sir Winston Churchill

[Lawrence Wasserman]

Douglas Fir is like no other fir. It is sold, marked & priced differently from SPF. The fir in SPF (spruce/pine/fir) is from softer & weaker species that are similar in strength and other charactersics to the spruce & pine that also are included in the "SPF" description.