Sanding floorboards

[craig]

A hardy perennial of a topic.

I'm in a 100yo house and have decided to sand the floor in the front room. Bit by bit in a nice controlled way. I've cut some carpet and underlay away and the floor is reasonable quality. It has a dark black stain applied, but not uniformly. Boards are slightly cupped, but both stain and cupping are eliminated by a belt sander with coarse grit belt. However the brads are giving me a problem.

I have a nail punch set and club hammer and, with a fair amount of whacking (about a minute per brad), can get the brads a couple of mm below the surface. However the floor is getting quite a beating, and I noticed that the holes around brads that I do sink in seem to be growing as I hammer on brads further along the same board. This isn't good either for the fixing of the boards to the joists or to pipework underneath the floor. So I thought I'd stop and see what people thought. The boards are in such good condition at the mo that it would be silly to put laminate or somesuch over it, yet if I carry on I'm worried I may end up with the brads no longer holding the boards adequately because the vibration's enlarged all the holes.

The walls are all done and don't need atention for some time, so I'd rather avoid removing the skirting boards and lifting the floorboards in order to remove all of the brads and relay using screws, which will be more controllable, but at the moment I don't see another way. Any suggestions?

[Stuart]

Are you seriously saying you spend ONE MINUTE on each brad .What on earth are you doing that takes one minute . .

Also I don't understand this bit

"and I noticed that the holes around brads that I do sink in seem to be growing as I hammer on brads further along the same board."

How can holes be growing ???

You don't need to be so fussy .Tap the brads to surface level with a hammer and leave them at that . The floor sander with the coarse paper will do the rest so long as they don't protrude above the board . .

Stuart

[craig]

It's really hard to get the brads to move. I have to belt them repeatedly with the club hammer (via a nail punch) and the whole floor bounces, which can't be good for the pipework secured beneath. It's as if the brads have become very well bonded to the joists, and it seems that the transmitted vibration when hammering one in has caused the hole around a prreviously done one to get larger, as if the movement of the now loosened brad as the adjacent flooor is belted has sawn at the sides of the hole. It's weird how much belting these are taking to shift- I have to keep moving the nail punch around because it's digging into the metal, despite being 2mm diameter- the same width as the brads.

I know there were damp issues with this place before I bought it, and the floor in an adjacent room was replaced because the joists rotted. I'm wondering if, although this room wasn't so bad, corrosion has caused the brads- which I guess are iron- to swelll inside the joists.

Ah- will the sander cope with removing a small amount of metal? To get the stain off and get rid of the cupping I think it'll need around a millimetre taking off at the sides of the board, where they're highest and where the brads are. The brads are flush with the surface at the moment, but I thought I'd have to knock them below the surface, at least down as far as I'll be sanding.

[Stuart]

I have had three floors sanded and just made sure all nails ,many of which were steel brads were at surface level and the first ( and successive) sandings just sanded them away same as it did to the wood .All you need is to make sure they do not protrude above the wood as they will rip the sanding sheets to shreds.