Our kitchen has varnished floorboards. They have gaps between them, the tongues are damaged, and they are in generally poor shape.
I have a vague recollection of seeing someone on television restoring floorboards by taking them up and running them through a machine that trimmed the edges off and produced nice uniform (though somewhat smaller) boards. They needed a few extra boards to make up for the trimming. What is such a machine called? Can they be rented?
-- Richard
A circular saw bench probably. You lose the tongues and grooves of course.
And you'd need to watch out for the odd nail / screw / etc in old floorboards..... even if they don't damage the saw blade then they can be ejected at high speed !
Adrian
Sounds more like a spindle moulder to me.
Don' know if spindle moulders can be rented, probably thought of as too dangerous to hire out.
There is that - for the uninitiated they can be very dangerous. Limiters on recent tooling and guarding may reduce the risks, but there are plenty of ways to do yourself a mischief.
Additionally, they have cast tops normally and in general are heavy - they need to be - so not the kind of thing that can be manipulated by one person into the back of a Mondeo.
This project would be more reasonably be done by taking the boards to a joinery firm and having them run through a spindle moulder with T&G tooling.
Nah, it's a thicknesser
You wouldn't use a thicknesser to process the edges and create new tongues and grooves.
You might use one to plane the varnish and a thin layer of wood from the surface, since the boards are being removed anyway, but it is likely to spoil the knives quite quickly because of grit etc.
I doubt it's economic to lift boards and carry out any sort or restorative work unless they're hardwood.
A spindle moulder is very much a tool for the professionals - non- portable, and have a reputation for snatching off fingers (although as an earlier poster pointed out, the legal requirements for modern tooling have made them much safer).
Possibly though the thing you saw on tv was a thicknesser - which will skim the top face to give clean wood. These you can hire - but only the portable ones which do an ok job - but not the equal of a static machine. They'll probably also charge you for nicked/damaged blades - which is supremely easy to do with old wood when the blades encounter embedded grit or metal.
Simplest solution - board over. Or rip up and buy new board.
Strikes me as a lot of unnecessary work. Just lift and relay. People often dont realise that quite a lot of damage that looks real bad close up isnt even noticeable once you stand up. The standards required for floors and furniture are utterly different.
Matching wood might be found at a used wood place, if not some could be taken from another room. If more adventurous something contrasting could be added as a pretty pattern in the centre. Just make sure the level of wear roughly matches.
NT
Could use a ruuter and a table.
However,best is to replace the lot,or get this dne professionally,if te wood is rare expesnive and lovely (oak/elm etc)
would not bother to repair if pine or softwood. Replace with Chipboard. Better quality ;-)
Yeah, turn up at a joinery shop with a pile of old floorboards! I can imagine the reception you'd get
The question was about how to get the edges of the boards re-machined.
Whether that is economically viable vs. slinging them away and replacing with hardwood is a different question.
Most joinery shops don't touch recycled timber
That would depend on the willingness of the customer to pay for replacement cutters and planer blades and setting up thereof. I got that answer a few years ago when asking a similar question and before having my own machinery that will do such work. I agree that it did add to the cost quite a bit.
In message , Andy Hall writes
On setting up planer blades.....
This may be old news to the adepts but I thought it was rather neat. Mark up a splint of wood with two lines 15mm apart. Rest the splint on the shoe (first line on the edge) and across the planer drum such that the blade will pick up and carry it forward.
Rotate the drum by hand and note how far forward the splint is moved by contact with the blade. Repeat at different positions across the shoe and adjust the cutter accordingly.
regards
Or just undo a few hex screws and reverse the blades in the self setting carriers.
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