Making and installing flooring

Any of you guys ever make and lay flooring? I've got access to a lot of ash (victims of the Emerald Ash Borer) and can make cants or boards in the woods with my Alaskan Chainsaw Mill... (Recall the MS 461 I got from Craig's List back in January). Thus the cost of the raw materials is my time and chainsaw consumables. The rest is shop work... I'm thinking about doing a random width floor for my house... say nominal 4, 5 and 6 inch boards. I'm wondering, however, about nailing it down... will edge nailing 6" floor boards like the typical strip floor suffice or does it demand face nailing?

BTW, I've been milling boards up to 29" wide with the MS 461 using a Granberg mill and a 36" bar... Works pretty well and a 29" x 10.5' board is pretty impressive... two of them covers more square footage than a sheet of plywood! ;~)

Reply to
John Grossbohlin
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T&G? Edge nail, with grooves on the back - just like "real" hardwood flooring.

Reply to
clare

Yes, T&G... make my shaper earns it's keep!

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

Don't forget that neither the bottom edges nor the tongue edge touch the adjacent board; i.e, the tongue is less wide than the groove is deep and there is a bevel below the tongue (and/or on the adjacent plank).

Reply to
dadiOH

If I was doing more than a little bit of flooring I'd definitely want to have a power feeder on all of the tools. In commercial applications virtually everything is automatic and uses custom tooling. In a home shop there would be the job of ripping, jointing, and planing to thickness before you even get around to the actual making of flooring. Amana makes a nice cutter set for the T&G but that is just a small bit of the work involved.

In a factory it is basically a single pass through a machine which does it all, takes in sawn rough wood in one end and spits out T&G at the other end. I still don't know how one would go about doing the grooving on the bottom surface that seems to be a standard fixture on commercial flooring in a home shop. Many passes through a router table? Stacked round-nose cutters on the shaper and feed on edge?

Reply to
John McGaw

I have seen where the relief cut on the underside has been a simple saw kerf (or more depending on width of the board) maybe 1/8" --> 3/16" deep, rather than plowing out a wide groove...

Reply to
bnwelch

not sure but i think flooring is usually kiln dried

but maybe it depends on the species

looks better too i bet

sounds like you almost have your wood supply set up from end to end

i am guessing that you probably plant trees to

am i right

Reply to
Electric Comet

the later sounds good

Reply to
clare

The T&G shaper cutters take care of those aspects of the job... I have no intention of winging it!

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

A power feeder is part of the plan... I can use it on the table saw, band saw, jointer and shaper... The molder/planer will be used for thicknessing and the backing relief and that has it's own feed.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

I'm sure in a factory environment it would be... I'm using standing dead ash that is pretty dry already and I have the materials to create a solar kiln. I figure that by the time I get all the wood cut that the earliest cut stuff will be ready for machining.

Pretty much... though being part of a large woodworking club has given me access to wood as needed over the years. Now I'm simply going to another level. It makes it possible to grab the odd urban tree that is offered up that I passed on in the past. It's kind of sad to think of the cherry and walnut trees I let get cut up into firewood in the past... Taking Game of Logging chainsaw training opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities. Also, seeing a video on mounting a winch on an Alaskan mill made the viability of milling inaccessible large trees realistic... Pushing a chainsaw mill through a large log is brutal work but I can twirl the winch handle with one finger due to the gear reduction and get a better result (smoother and more consistent cut).

Not exactly, but I have watched the subject trees grow since they were not much more than saplings so it's sort of true... ;~) I suppose that there are a few trees I planted 40+ years ago that could someday end up coming down under my saw. A maple about 32" DBH and a polar about 14" DBH come to mind as they have outgrown their places.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

I can run them through my molder set up with backing knives... One pass.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

Look up Matt Cremona on YouTube. He mills his own lumber too. A short time back he milled up his own flooring and installed it in a room of his house. Huge project, very impressive.

Anthony Watson

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Reply to
HerHusband

"John Grossbohlin" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Back in the day, a gloat like that on the wreck would have been followed by a chorus of "you suck!".

Have you succeeded in drying any of those wide boards? I'd expect them to split longwise as they dry.

John

Reply to
John McCoy

I'd seen Matt's videos... found them while exploring the possibility of doing it.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

The boards were milled from standing dead ash trees and were pretty well dried already... That said, I did expect the ones with pith to split... but I'm sawing them down the pith while stickering so I have control over the split. I'd never use those boards whole anyway... don't look good to me.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

Something to think about, my experience with dead dried wood is that it tends to be extra hard and tough on the tooling.

Reply to
Leon

Aged dry elm is like a rock - and aged dry ash is just about as bad!!! I built my shed with hardwood 2X from sheet metal pallets - had to drill for virtually every nail!!

Reply to
clare

tends to be extra hard and tough on the tooling.

This stuff isn't bad... dead less than a year. I cut half a 10.5' long 30" DBH log into 4/4 boards without having to resharpen the chain. Taking the bark off helps a lot... bark is full of grit.

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

What do you mean by "aged dry"? I have a quite a bit of ash that I've had for over 30 years. It cuts like butter. Well, frozen butter. ;-) I have 10 or 12 maple 2x10s that I got at the same time but I haven't done anything with them for a long time.

Reply to
krw

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