Hardwood Flooring

[Bernie Hunt]

I'm down to the last strips on the floor. I ran a border around the room and left a field in the middle. I've closed the field from two sides and it's time to determine the final strips. The remaining hole is not square, but it's only 5/8" over 12 feet, so I don't expect that to be an issue.

I have to fit 5, 21/4" boards into a 9 5/8 space. So my plan is to rip down the last 5 boards to spread the difference out. For the boards I'm ripping, can I use biscuitts when installing or do I need to cut a new grove into the ripped edge?

Any other ideas?

Thanks, Bernie

[car pay dee um]

See steps six and seven at the link below, they seem to apply to the question you are asking.

[Bernie Hunt]

They just discuss replacing one board. I'm concerned about having 5 rows of boards with no interlocking because the groves got cut off to make the boards the right size.

Bernie

[dadiOH]

If you'll take two boards, put them together and look at the end you'll see that both the tongue and the bottom edge under the tongue do not touch the second board. That's both so the top edges can be butted tightly and to relieve some of the stress from expansion and contraction. As soon as you rip a board, those benefits are gone. Additionally, ripping means you have to face fasten. Nothing wrong with face fastening but put the nails/screws in a hole you can fill with a face grain plug.

At the moment - it is early and I'm still on my first cup of coffee - I'm not sure what I'd do but I wouldn't use biscuits. I might rip and rebuild the profile on five boards or I might use four boards and fill the gap that would result by gluing in a 1/8"+ spline above the tongue on each board. More likely, I'd just make the last board wider.

That border is going to come back to bite you as your shutter strake - the last board - will be a PITA to get down neatly. Would have been much easier if you had saved the border on that side to last so that the final edge on it would be hidden by the baseboard.

[marson]

messagenews: [e-mail]...

Here's my two cents.

You could use biscuits. The disadvantage is that if you glue them all together, you are in effect creating a board 9 inches wide. With seasonal changes in humidity, that is going to shrink like one piece of wood, and gaps may form on the edges. It sort of depends on the species of wood and how much wood movement you expect. The nice thing about strip flooring is that the 2 1/4" strips shrink a relatively small amount--the gaps sort of get distributed all over.

You might consider using biscuits without glue, to avoid creating a 9 inch wide board. Maybe you would even want to make your own "biscuits" since factory biscuits are often sort of sloppy in the slots, and won't hold the boards in good alignment.

Another option would be to use a slot cutter on a router (or even a dado blade on a table saw) to cut grooves in your boards. You could even mill up splines to fit these grooves.

At any rate, hope you aren't getting paid by the square foot on those last 5 boards!