I recently cut some rough pine boards to 19-5/8x5x3/4″. The boards were from piano crates I salvaged. The grain is nice. I’m planning to plane then square them with a jointer and finally biscuit join them together for a floor in a guest bedroom. I will either glue them down with adhesive or let the floor float on a thin foam pad like they do with Pergo floors. They’ll probably be around 5/8″ thick after planing since they are somewhat cupped. I might do a herringbone pattern or just stagger them. The 250 or so boards are stacked on my porch in the cold Maine weather. My question is: Should I plane them cold and then stack them in the room where they will be installed or stack them first and plane them later after they have acclimated to the room? Any suggestions?
ThyngsCorner
Replies
My method of choice would be to acclimate first.
I believe this lessens the chance of an unpleasant surprise later if there is a big difference between outdoor and indoor humidity.
Sounds like a good winter project - enjoy!
Thanks for the responses. Any experience on floating versus adhesive?
ThyngsCorner
Limerick, Maine
I have very little experience with flooring , still in the process of doing my first one!
Humidity, on the other hand ,has been my woodworking companion for many years.It's not what you chew, it's how you chew it
It seems to me you need to run the boards through a planner and get them to a uniform thickness first. I would also think it would be difficult to join cupped boards. As far as joining them with a biscuit, my experience with that is mine don't always line up perfectly.
The only experience I've had with installing a floor is either nailing it to a subfloor, solid wood, and gluing down to concrete, that was a laminate. I don't know if you can glue pine down.
Good Luck and God Bless
les
FWIW I suggest you plan on joining the boards using tongue and groove. Floors rely on the mechanical interlock between boards which you wont get with biscuits. If you can secret nail, visitors wont be able to see how the floor is attached.
Floating or adhesive both sound like bad ideas to me. They work well on manufactured products but my feeling is a solid wood floor needs to be nailed down.Tom
I believe that letting them acclimate in the room for a week prior to installation is the big key. Also, don't do anything in the room to drastically change the humidity. Over in breaktime there was a thread about a floor being installed in a room that was being painted as the wood acclimated. The wood ended up absorbing alot of moisture, swelled up, was installed and then dried out quickly to the normal ambiant conditions which caused gaps to from. As long as you plane them all under the same conditions, then they should all react the same way, unless you happen to be milling for a particular thickness and not just a uniform thickness.
Also, they make these really nice 4 disc random orbital floor sanders for use on soft woods. They are made by the U-sand company, and they have a list on their website of places that rent them. Unless you really know what you are doing, drum sanders are a real risk on softwoods.
If you are going to lay the floor as strip flooring then definitely T&G is the way to go with boards of this width and 5/8" thick, and I would glue down with 2 secret nails in each piece as well.
If you are going to do a herringbone pattern you would need to T&G the ends as well and you'll need to make left hand and right handed pieces. I'd lay it as parquet, square-edged, to a Whitehall pattern like this
View Image
IanDG
Edited 1/3/2003 8:30:39 PM ET by IanDG
Ian:
I just came across your web page and have to comment.Your work is great. Truly a craftsmans hands at work here.Now,having said that,here's a question for you.Can I use a maple border(11") with a white Pine floor(6") T&G or do expansion rates fluctuate to much.This floor will be on the second floor of a house so the moisture levels should be fairly constant. And should I use glue, and why.
Chris
Hi Knobby,A few questions first so I get a better picture of the job.What's the sub-base? Is the 11" maple border made up of several boards?How were you intending to nail down the boards? -- face or blind nailing?There is one problem with a floor on the second floor, coated with polyurethane, that occasionally occurs when the humidity is high and the second floor is a lot colder than the first. Condensation can occur on the underside of the coating -- in other words, IN the top layer of the board --- the top expands, the board cups, and the floor looks like cobblestones.It is an aesthetic problem mainly but it's worth looking at a pervious coating if you think those conditions might apply.IanDG
Ian
The sub floor is 1/4" oak ply over old original 1x4 maple that was severly fire damaged. I would like the 1x11" maple to be 1 solid board(been air drying for 2 years now) and blind nailed as well as face nailed along the wall and I was'nt going to t&g the edge that the 1/6 Pine would butt up to.Of course the Pine is t&g itself.This certainly is'nt as aesthetically pleasing as some of your work but I thought it would look ok. What 's your opinion. How else can I dress up this Pine floor without taking over the whole house.
Knobby,If you are using the maple board at the edge of the floor then movement widthwise shouldn't be a problem but cupping might. I would T&G it to the pine, mainly because otherwise you'll get a ridge at the join if the maple cups at all. With a board of that width I'd consider screwing down and plugging the holes -- maybe imitate a pegged plank.As to the pine, I'd face nail that and fill the holes as I don't think blind-nail would be as successful at holding a 6" pine board.I'd put a bead of construction adhesive every 12" as well but I realise it's a contentious issue!IanDG
I would definately go with shaping/routing the planks to tongue & groove and then blind nailing to the subfloor. Pneumatic nailers are available for rent at most home centers, and the router bits are readily available at reasonable cost for several sources.
Biscuits do not give the same physical interlock as does T&G. A floor really needs that interlock strength due to the constant slight flexing.
Floating a floor is done with specialty floor products. I don't believe you can do it with just any planks.
What type of pine are these planks? If Eastern yellow they should make a fine long wearing floor, but if a western white/sugar pine, your floor will be quite soft and not likely wear as well as you might like.
Lee in Cave Junction, Oregon
On the Redwood Highway
"I would definately go with shaping/routing the planks to tongue & groove and then blind nailing to the subfloor."If you blind nail a 5/8" pine board, 5" wide, the slightest flexing of the board as it's walked on will break off the tongue at the nails, that's why I recommended glue down and nail, or glue-down by itself.IanDG
My kitchen floor is Jarah, blind nailed thoughout. Tongues breaking at the nails hasn't been a problem. The mechanical interlock between the tongue and groove acts so as to hold both sides of the board down. The main benefit of secret nailing is there is no need to punch several hundred nails below the surface before sanding and no need to fill the same number of nail holes prior to applying the surface finish. IF you face nail keep some of the dust from the sanding (make sure it is clean wood dust with no foreign matter), mix it with the finish and use it as a putty to conceal the nail holes then do a final light sand and apply the finish. The best finish for this sanding dust mix is two pack polyurethane - if used on the entire floor it dries to a hard clear high gloss. However, it remains soft for up to a week after being applied so furniture can leave a depression - not really a problem unless you move your stuff arround.
There's a considerable difference in strength between Jarrah and pine, then there is the board size to consider. The pine is only 5/8" thick overall and the 5" width exacerbates the problem -- what's your Jarrah? 18mm thick x 95mm cover?IanDG
I did ask what variety of pine the boards were. In soft pine, hand blind nailing could conceivably cause some splitting at the tongue, especially if the tongues were not predrilled. In Doug fir or eastern yellow pine this should not be a problem.
Also, air driven nails do not share these problems, being blunt, especially when the chisel tip is driven across the grain. In addition, the nails will be placed about a foot apart. I doubt that this will cause the tongue to break.
Air nailers of various types are used to blind nail T&G flooring every day. I have not heard that tongue splitting was a major problem in any commonly used floor wood.
--
Lee in Cave Junction, Oregon
On the Redwood Highway
You have misunderstood my point completely --it's not a matter of the nails splitting the timber as they are driven -- it's the flexing of a 5" wide pine board, that's only 5/8" thick, as it is walked on putting strain on the area where it is blind-nailed. The nail will be driven at an angle through the tongue so only a small piece of the pine board will be resisting movement and if it splits that will allow more flexing of the board which will cause more splitting -- and so on. Glueing the boards as well will stop any movement -- the nails will then only have to secure the boards until the glue sets. The critical points are the width and thickness of the boardsWe're talking about a floor here -- it's not something you want to have to repair and refinish constantly. IanDG
IanDG wrote: We're talking about a floor here -- it's not something you want to have to repair and refinish constantly.
I can certainly agree with your sentiment here, Ian. And, since I'm occasionally wrong, I'm always willing to learn something new. I've just never heard that such a problem was common.
Are you referring to any wood, or is this something that just occurs with relatively soft or weak woods? You did say that the strength of jarra reduced the problem, did you not? I would appreciate you expanding upon your basic statement.
Thanks!
--
Lee in Cave Junction, Oregon
On the Redwood Highway
I blind nailed down some Southern Yellow Pine 6" (5 3/4") using a hammer and nailset. I blunted the points of the nails and had no problem with splitting. This was several years ago and the last time I saw that floor there wasn't any problem with cupping.
Happy New Years eve to you all.
God Bless
les
Lee,"Are you referring to any wood, or is this something that just occurs with relatively soft or weak woods?"There are several factors that will aid splitting, species of timber, method of nailing, ratio of width to thickness.The pine is soft and splits easily along the grainBlind-nailing 5/8" thick material means you're only relying on a triangular section of timber about 5/16" thick.At this width and only 5/8" thick the seasonal movement will give you cupping and the board will flex up and down as it's walked on, putting strain directly on the small section between blind nail and sub-floor (consider also that this is going to happen not just once but over and over). If the board splits at one nail that will put more strain on adjoining fixings and make it more likely that they'll split too.View ImageI laid this floor with T&G Jarrah, 3½"x¾", blind-nailed every 12" but also a bead of construction adhesive every 12" and that was standard practice for every strip floor you see on my site. (I don't like call-backs!)5/8" thick material is normally used as 'glue-down' or it's face-nailed -- and it's not normally as wide as 5".Les,You're making the same mistake as Lee -- I'm not talking about the nails splitting the timber when it is being fixed down.IanDG
You and I are the same age and back when we were younger I don't remember the use of glue and there weren't any power nailers to lay a floor. They all had to be either blind nailed or nailed straight in and countersunk. When the floating floor system came along I know a lot of people were skeptical of it. In the early nineties I had hardwood laid in about 1600 sq feet of my house. The floor contractor, a friend didn't want to use the floating system for the same reason you are referring to. He was afraid of the flexing breaking the tongue over a period of time. I personally don't know of anybody having any problems with the floating system. I have had a couple of places in my house where the glue hasn't held, no big problem.
I had a customer open a retail carpet and hardwood store here the same time I was planning to put in my hardwoods. She leased a building in a strip center that already had nice carpet (close woven not shag). She laid the floating oak floor right on top of the carpet in an area about 12' x 12'. She was there a couple of years, it held up alright. She didn't recommend this as a practice, I think she just wanted to try it to see if it would work.
God Bless Happy New Year
les
Les,We are not talking about a floating floor -- in that system the floor is laid on a compressible pad and no nails are used. I've laid floating floors, 1/2" thick glue-down and 3/4" nail-down as well as parquet and what is being suggested is none of these.
If the pine is laid as a floating floor it will be fine.If it's laid as a face-nailed nail-down it will be fineIf it's laid as a glue-down it will be fine.If it's laid only blind-nailed it will fail over time because of splitting of the tongue at the fixings, and the reason will be because of the flexing of the boards. IanDG
In the original post he said he was going to glue the boards down or float them on a pad like Pergo. I blind nailed down yellow pine 5 3/4" to 3/4 plywood subfloor in 1981 and I posted earlier, the last time I saw it had not failed.
I don't think I would glue solid pine down because of the wood movement. Have you ever glued down solid pine?
God Bless
les
Les,"I blind nailed down yellow pine 5 3/4" to 3/4 plywood subfloor in 1981"----- and what was the thickness of the pine?"
I don't think I would glue solid pine down because of the wood movement. Have you ever glued down solid pine?"----- yes, Pinus Radiata, 1/2" thick, with polyurethane parquet adhesive to concrete, along with a host of different eucalypts .It amazes me that you wouldn't glue down solid pine because of the wood movement yet you seem to have trouble accepting that the same movement is capable of affecting blind-nailing. What's the rationale there?
IanDG
I used 1" X 6" (3/4" X 5 3/4") tongue and groove southern yellow pine. I don't have a dictionary handy what is Pinus Radita an STD maybe? Huh! (grin)
God Bless
les
what is Pinus Radita an STD maybe?
It's a species grown in plantations in Australia and New Zealand. I believe it originates from California where it is considered a weed :-)
Hey I'm going to make you drool a little. My Dad bought an old railroad section house in 1956 and had it moved on to a farm he owned. The floors were double tongue and groove cypress probably 4" X 1 1/4" thick. The living room was 24' long no splices, single boards, the rest of the house had the same flooring just not as long a run of boards. The porches had the same boards, you could see the exposed ends. The house was built around 1900 not sure exactly when. I wonder what some of those boards would be worth today.
God Bless
les
I refinished a floor just as you described. It was an upside down house (living and kitchen upstairs). The walls were framed on top the flooring. I was told the wood was from a bowling alley. It seemed way to soft for that. The house burnt down in one of our many fires about a month after I worked on it
Jeff in so cal
75 f---33%
Jeff
When you refinish floors do you use a drum sander or an orbital. I refinished a rent house floors several years ago, I couldn't find a drum sander to rent, the orbital machines had just come out. I rented one and had great results, I'm in the process of remolding another rental and I thought I would get to refinish the floors over the holidays but my factor rate (5) clicked in, haven't got to it yet.
I see you are having the same miserable weather out there, man I feel for you'all.
God Bless
les in se tex
50 f----55 %
Les
I've never tried an orbital.
Around here for rent, HD's have some nice equipment (Clark), all my wholesalers. In my experience rental yards have the worst equip. and It's poorly maintained. I would look in your phone book under flooring.
Jeff in so cal
64 f--40%
Only a little drool. I live in a 110 year old house. The ceiling joists for the 2nd floor are 26 ft long 4x3s and the 1st floor floor still has what I think are the original 20ft long T&G boards.
ian
Some of that old growth can be nice.
The oldest house I've worked on was built in 1903 1/2" x 2" flat sawn red oak. On the west coast we don't have really old houses, 100 years is about it.
What wood is it in your house?
Jeff in so cal
66 f---39%
Mostly unspecified Australian hard woods, probably sourced from coastal NSW. However, my kitchen floor is Jarah, whilst the cabinets are Rock Maple.
Ian in Sydney
25 C 74%
ian
I've installed a few floors with Jarah. This one big job I did, they wanted it sanded piano quality so I hard plated it for days then screened for days also, even with dust collection I wiped out this 4 million dollar house, red dust all over. It was my first Jarah floor, I couldn't believe I would get that fine of dust from 36g. When I got to 100g my Clark was blowing more than sucked. I was under the gun on this one I started the coat of Glitsa (Bacca) at 2AM worked all night. It turned out nice and they loved it (got paid).
I'm so glad I don't sand floors anymore!
Jeff in so cal
75 f---35%
Ian back when your T&G floors were milled and the ones on my Dad's house, was there any powered machinery around to do this or was it done by hand? In this mechanical age we live in we take it for granted sometime that electric power has been around forever, not so. In the fifties I had relatives in East Texas that had no electricity that meant no running water, no indoor plumbing, no electric lights. They used kerosene lamps and had a battery operated radio, a wood cookstove and a fireplace for warmth. These weren't poor people they lived in a remote area and electricity wasn't available. In East Texas we have an area called "The Big Thicket" though not as large as it was when I was a kid it still has some pretty remote areas today. There was a girl 17 years old came into town out of the Thicket and she had never see an electric light bulb. I bet down where you live this is not unusual even today.
God Bless
les se tx 52 f......54%
Hey
we're much more up to date than that! There's a town about 5hrs north of here that claims to have had the world's first electric street lights. I do not know of a town that didn't have electricity after about 1920 and most properties, except for the really isolated ones, ie those over 100 miles from the nearest town, would have had mains electricity by about 1970. Services like "School of the Air" and the "Flying Doctor" that rely on two-way radio meant that ALL isolated towns and properties had electric generators before WW2 and isolated towns much earlier. Every outback property I've been to has at least one one lung diesel generator dating from the 1920s or 30s out the back. Cooking was by wood stove and many people still swear by them.
As to milling timber mouldings, before electricity there was water and steam power that drove machinery using belt drives. Some of the really old factories often still have the drive shafts in the roof. In the late 60s I visited a flour mill that had converted from water power to hydro electricity, using the same water race as had originally turned the mill wheel. On-site power generation went out of favour in the 1980s when the local coal generators had far too much capacity and went searching for every customer that could find. They even took mains power to a town that had a world class solar panel array.
I'm always surprised by the "what did they do before electricity" comment. I've read somewhere that the first water powered saw mill opened in about 1470 - hopefuly another forum reader can supply a closer date.
Ian
25 C --- 70% RH and the sun set over an hour ago!
Is that area what they call the "Hill Country" of Texas? I've been reading the Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson, and what you describe is consistent with Caro's description of the area where Johnson grew up. Just very, very remote and undeveloped.
Is that area what they call the "Hill Country" of Texas
Mark the hill country of Texas is in the Austin, San Antonio area, I was referring to East Texas. If you drew a line from Houston to Dallas everything east of there is considered East Texas. My relatives that we use to visit lived in Van Zandt county, this was called free state because they were the last county to join the United States when Texas joined. Some of those attitudes were still there when I was a kid. This is about 90 miles east of Dallas.
The Big Thicket is in an area in East Texas, Lufkin down to Liberty roughly. A few years back I owned a weekend house on Frog Pond ( a small lake in the thicket) and there was an old fort site on the state map close by. I ask a local for directions to go there. He told me but also warned me to be careful because some folks didn't like intruders. I found the road with a large sign put there by the state telling about the fort site 15 miles ahead. This was a dirt/gravel road, we went through several gate crossing identifying them as hunting leases and warning not to hunt there unless you were a member. We felt safe because we had no intention of hunting, we just wanted to see the fort site. The last warning got our attention, it said "You will be shot on sight" Keep Out. I took them to mean it, I turned around and left.
God Bless
les
Very interesting. Thanks for the reply.
Guys,
I didn't expect this much discussion but this is good. I actually think the boards may not be pine. They aren't quite as soft as pine. I think they may be hemlock. My house is made of hemlock and there is a resemblance. My dad works for a company that sells pianos. He saves a lot of the wood from crates that they ship the pianos in. There's some really nice stuff. It's usually all twisted and full of holes but if you cut it into short lengths and plane it it looks great. I built a floating floor in our walk-in closet from 2" wide by 1" thick boards that I dowel pinned and glued together. It's a floating floor on a pad but only about 7' square. Since it's so thick, infrequently walked on, and made of harder woods such as mahogany and walnut, etc. it will probably last and always always look good.
The wood I have for the guest room floor had holes in it every so many inches which is why I cut it into short lengths. The room that it is going in is a guest room that is not used frequently. I do have three kids but they don't go in the room because we keep some nice old antiques in there so traffic on the floor will be minimal.
I don't have a lot of woodworking tools (yet!) so I was hoping to get away with using a 5/32" 4wing cutter bit with biscuits. Unfortunately my router (actually dad's) is only a 1/4" so the selection of bits is limited.
I'm curious about all the resistance to glueing pine? Hemlock gets real hard when it ages (many bent nails in my house). ANy other advice if the wood is hemlock?
ThyngsCorner
The wood I have for the guest room floor had holes in it every so many inches which is why I cut it into short lengths
By the sound of things your only real option is a parquet (sp?) floor
Not to repeat, but I definitely would NOT float the floor. I really can't imagine any wood not having seasonal cupping due to changes in temperature and humidity, and I would think that cupping in a floor would look really bad.
As to the biscuiting, I think you will definitely have inexact mating of the boards which also will be unacceptable, so you'd end up having to sand the whole thing as soon as you put it down. A combination of glueing the boards to the floor, joining them together with biscuits, then sanding and finishing the whole thing, might work.
Mark,
That's what I was planning. I laid 8" wide tongue and groove pine in my living room a couple of years ago and I didn't let the wood sit in the room long enough so when I finally cranked up the wood stove all the boards shrank and now I have large gaps. The floor still looks nice but if I wasn't in such a rush to get the floor down (kids party was approaching fast) it would be much nicer. I wanted to ask a few questions here to avoid problems like this on this floor. I really want to use the piles of scrap wood that I have instead of spending hundreds on stuff that looks just like everyone elses. I've gotten some good advice here from everyone but I'm still not convinced that using adhesive and biscuits to secure the floor wouldn't work. Another option that could be effective could be to countersink, screw and plug. This would look nice after sanding the floor but there'd be a lot of drilling. I could make a nice fixture on the drill press... In any event, I don't want to spend a lot of money. After all, the 200 year old wide pine floors in my neighbors houses still look good and some boards are over 14" wide. They aren't tongue and groove. They aren't cupped. I'd rather not face nail a bunch of 5" wide boards but I would think that adhesive would work and biscuits should only help.
I don't have the experience of many people responding here - so please speak up if I'm setting myself up for failure!
ThyngsCorner
I'm also in the tongue and groove camp. Biscuits will help with alignment but in my experience T&G is the only way to go on a floor. With the floor construction you're looking at, I can't see how you can bring the edges together so that the biscuits give you adequate shear transfer between the boards - T&G gives you this continuous shear transfer.
If you elect to go with biscuits I suggest that you register off the underside of the boards not the top side. This way the biscuits will not be trying to keep a board a little way off the sub-floor.
the 200 year old wide pine floors in my neighbors houses still look good and some boards are over 14" wide. They aren't tongue and groove. They aren't cupped.
Have you looked at your neighbour's floors. My prediction is that the 200 y.o. pine floors are installed straight onto the floor joists - there is no sub floor - and the boards are probably over 1 in thick (T&G was really time consuming prior to the advent of powered mill shops) and thin boards benefit most from the T&G joint. Without a sub-floor the humidity is the same on the top and bottom of each board so cupping - which is usually associated with uneven exposure to changes to humidity - is minimised, if not eliminated by a surface sand 30 or 40 years ago.
Ian
If you don't want to do a T&G joint you can cut a 1/4" x 1/4" grove on all the edges and use a slip-tong. It makes it harder to install but sense it's for your own house it wont matter. I buy my slip-tong from a wholesaler for pennies but I guess you can make your own.
Jeff in so cal
74 f---35%
Jeff,
What's a slip tong?
ThyngsCorner
It's a spline, 1/4" x 1/2" rounded on all four edges. Cut a 1/4" x 1/4" grove then glue in the slip-tong then blind nail just like you had a regular tong. It's messy and slow because you have to use glue. It takes the place of T&G. We use it when we want to change directions any where you have grove to grove. You can get it from a hardwood flooring wholesaler real cheep.
Jeff in so cal
70 f---36%
A floating floor with solid wood will create major problems with expansion and contraction. Definitely mill t&g along the edges and ends otherwise the joints will tend to become uneven over time. Also, with boards as wide as 5" or 6" blind nailing alone would not be sufficient. If the room is on the first floor you will need some sort of vapor barrier.
Are you installing them over a slab or pier and beam?
I'm installing them over 1xvarious width boards (up to 14") at a 45 degree angle that is covered with sheets of particle board.
I've installed every kind of pine there is, up to 24" wide. You need to mill or have someone else mill it with a T&G if you want to blind nail it. Biscuits wont work. I have installed a pine floor that was square edged that I top nailed with cut nails, and I didn't glue the edges (left a slite gap betwen them). It worked fine. I glue and nail everything over 2 1/4" wide to the plywood sub floor.
There is no way I would float this floor!!
See my post on the other flooring thread
Jeff in so cal
70 f---37%
I'm not going to float it! After thinking about it it would fall apart. Especially with the temperature changes considering this room is only used some of the time.
I definitely would stack (and sticker) the boards in the use environment before planing to final thickness. I use thin stickers for such situations (3/16" or 1/4"). Make sure the stickers are in a vertical line (so they transfer the load to the floor without further distorting the boards). Keep the stack level - you may have to add shims in the sticker stack - to compensate for bent, cupped, or twisted boards.
Good luck! Wil
Wil,
I'm new to this. What are stickers?
ThyngsCorner
What are stickers?
When you dry wood you use strips of wood in between each layer to let air flow through. Keep the strip directly above each other and try to use the same species of wood you are drying. The wrong wood will stain the wood you are drying.
God Bless
les
Individual boards stacked for drying are separated by thin strips of wood called "stickers", to allow the drying air to circulate. I usually use 3/4" thick stickers to air dry green wood, directly from the saw. Thicker strips are often used ( but not by me!) A well constructed green-lumber stack saves space, allows the boards to dry, helps prevent staining and distortion. Stickers are placed close to each end (to control end checking) and about 3ft apart in vertical lines.
As noted earlier, I've used thinner stickers for stacking dried boards to stabilize in the use environment. I would use dry wood for stickers, similar color or lighter than the boards. Stacking for acclimation is not critical; it will save space and facilitate moisture stabilization, but is unlikely to either improve or degrade the boards. It's not even necessary to stack the boards if plenty of space is available (a luxury I never have.)
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