Because I like to do a little woodwork as a hobby, when the opportunity arose to lay a floor I jumped at it. I am planning on laying a solid, white, hard maple floor onto battens previously fixed to a cement floor. The boards are a mixture of widths from 5 1/2″ to 7 1/2″ with a pre-machined, rough thickness of 1 1/8″. I’m concerned about how to attached the boards to the battens. My plan is to hire a nailer of some description but it occurs to me that the tongues of the boards will probably split as I hammer in the nails. Do I have to pre-drill the tongues over every batten and, even if I do, I’ll still have the problem of aligning the nailer to the angle of the pilot holes. This doesn’t sound good.
Are there special nails and/or special guns for nailing hard maple flooring? I’m planning on spacing the battens every 12″ or so, which probably means a nail every 12″ so drilling pilot holes on approx 50 planks fills me with dread.
Thanks and best Regards, Polyfilla
PS. Great Magazine, keep up the hard work.
Replies
Dear Polyfilla,
Thank you for your question to Ask the Experts. Unfortunately, flooring is a bit out of scope for Fine Woodworking and would be better asked of our pals at Fine Homebuilding. Please try posting your question in Breaktime, the Fine Homebuilding equivalent of Knots, and someone there should be able to assist: http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime
Thank you for your participation,
Gina Eide
Fine Woodworking
Edited 10/3/2006 10:53 am ET by GEide
Polyfilla,
In the last two years, I've laid about 6000 sq feet of hardwood flooring in my two homes here in mass. The first couple i actually glued... which is something that I don't recommend.
Then I got a Porter Cable pneumatic floor nailer...and discovered that there was a much better way. It shoots special cleats that come in different lengths, and aligns via a special shoe with the tongue in each board. I believe that you can rent these devices, although I paid a little over $400 for mine. (The other alternative is to buy one... use it, then resell it on E-Bay)
The one sticky wicket here would be that most boards are of irregular length, so they wouldn't end on your battens. You may have to either insert extra battens under the joints... or deal with the squeaks that will result if you don't.
Hope this helps!
Cashmandoo
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