I am trying to repair heart of pine floors in an old home. Some of the boards are damaged or rotten. From other portions of the home I am removing floor boards to use in repairing the existing floor. When I move a wall, I salvage the studs which are heart pine so I plan to make replacement boards for the floor when I exhaust my supply of existing floor boards. My question is, many of the old floor boards and some of the studs have nails which have rusted and are difficult/impossible to find and/or remove.
What tools have you used to find the nails and to remove the nails?
Carl Pedigo
Replies
Carl,
There is at least one metal detector made specifically for finding nails in recycled wood, I've seen it in several woodworking catalogs. Searching around, I just found it in the Lee Valley catalog in two sizes, the small one is around $20.00 the large one costs $80.00. I used one years ago and it worked fairly well. I suspect the technology is better today.
It is almost impossible to remove nails that have rusted so badly that they break off, there just isn't enough metal left to get a grip on, plus any rust left in the wood is very hard and abrasive and often harder on blades than the metal itself.
There are carbide saw blades, meant for carpentry, designed for cutting through nails, but I don't know of a planer or jointer blade made for such rugged work,
Probably the best approach is to clean up the wood the best you can, then cut, joint, and plane it with one set of sacrificial blades. After that dig out, or punch in, the nails that are on the surfaces that will show and replane the visible surfaces with a good blade set.
John
Thanks for your answer. That is exactly what I needed. Carl
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