Flooring Advice

[Brad Shipton]

I am building my own Jatoba flooring. I have made a bunch thus far (about 500sqft) so I do know what it entails. Yes, it is a pretty time consuming job, but I have invested to many $$ into tooling to change now.

My first orders of rough lumber was all 6"x12' long and I milled it down to 4.5" wide in lengths varying from 4' to 9'. All of the stock had the standard T&G profiles, end matched, as well as relief cuts.

My problem is 90% of the boards I received in the last order of 600bdft are 12" wide x 20' long. I am having a huge problem convincing myself to cut them down. I am toying with the idea of making my own 12" x 16' engineered flooring planks using two plies of 1/4" plywood with a 1/4" skin of Jatoba. I would use a vacuum bag and Urea Formaldehye adhesive. My shop size doesnt really lend itself to working this size of stock, but boy do I feel guilty about cutting all of this stock down. I know this will be a huge undertaking and I suspect this could be my nutiest idea thus far. I guess all I am asking is, am I nuts? Should I just cut the boards down and move on.

Thanks
Brad

[Peter Quinn]

Yes, you are insane. So I will certainly not try to talk you out of it.:D I'm sure you can pull it off. For my money I would rather have the length than the width, and it would be hard to glue up 20' lengths as a laminate. I'd probably split the 12" widths and shoot for a floor with 4"-5"-6" widths and keep it solid hardwood, long as possible, or make enough 4 1/2" to reach a breaking point and switch to a wide plank format.

I just made some samples of laminate flooring at work with a 7 3/8" veneer, white oak. We used a 3/8" pine core, laid 90 degrees to the face veneers, glued up two 3/16" veneers, one high grade for an A face, one less perfect for the B face. I made a press for the job, glued them up in stacks of 5 boards. Used tite bond type three cut with 10% water to buy a little rolling time. No vacuum, just a lot of clamps like the old days. Not the most fun I have ever had, made about 40SF! I can't imagine changing the species to something really hard like Jatoba being any more fun. Its something to go over radiant heat, seems quite stable thus far.

Not sure a single 1/4" veneer on top with two layers of plywood would create a stable lamination? That would buy you a thicker wear layer and more sandings, but will it balance and stay flat? Might be worth a test piece before going into production. Might be a good excuse to buy a power feed for your band saw too. Perhaps a sandwich of Jatoba, 3/8" MDF and some other hardwood that is cheaper for the B face? I have no idea how commercial laminate flooring is made, but it looks like a VERY thin veneer, a very THICK substrate relative to the veneer, and some cork or rubber to soften the blow of the MDF or HDF core.

Good luck, love to hear what you decide and how it comes out.

[Neal Clayton]

I am building my own Jatoba flooring. I have made a bunch thus far (about 500sqft) so I do know what it entails. Yes, it is a pretty time consuming job, but I have invested to many $$ into tooling to change now.

My first orders of rough lumber was all 6"x12' long and I milled it down to 4.5" wide in lengths varying from 4' to 9'. All of the stock had the standard T&G profiles, end matched, as well as relief cuts.

My problem is 90% of the boards I received in the last order of 600bdft are 12" wide x 20' long. I am having a huge problem convincing myself to cut them down. I am toying with the idea of making my own 12" x 16' engineered flooring planks using two plies of 1/4" plywood with a 1/4" skin of Jatoba. I would use a vacuum bag and Urea Formaldehye adhesive. My shop size doesnt really lend itself to working this size of stock, but boy do I feel guilty about cutting all of this stock down. I know this will be a huge undertaking and I suspect this could be my nutiest idea thus far. I guess all I am asking is, am I nuts? Should I just cut the boards down and move on.

Thanks
Brad

i agree, it would be a travesty to cut all that stuff short.

check with your local mill about cutting it into blanks for you?

[Brad Shipton]

Peter/Neal: Thanks for your advice. There are soo many reasons why I should just stick to the original plan, but I just cannot seem to get over cutting this nice stock down. I think I will do some trials. Worst case scenario I think I will cut them down to machine and then finger joint back together in 4 - 6" widths.

I was thinking of a 1/4" skin primarily because of the machines I have. I may reduce after veneering.

I am getting a price on a BS power feeder. I would like one of those for prepping passage door veneer anyway.

Thks again.

[Larry Edgerton]

I have a 42" wide Jatoba slab leaning up against my wall. I know your pain.

Oh ya, Jatoba moves a lot. A lot more than you would think a wood that dense would move. I would not count on your one sided lamination working. Jatoba is so tough I would be more inclined to split it and make 3/8 flooring, except you already have some done.

[Peter Quinn]

I was thinking of a 1/4" skin primarily because of the machines I have. I may reduce after veneering.


My concern was that a single layer of thick sawn veneer glued to a stable substrate like plywood might create an unstable situation and perhaps be prone to cupping. particularly in a 12" wide format. Not sure how to balance that. I do know that Jatoba is one of the most beautiful and durable floors I have seen. I'll be curious to see how you work out that great pile of wood. Do they make 20' vacuum bags?

[Brad Shipton]

Yup, Vacupress does make a 20"x21' bag and I asked Darryl to give me a price for a slightly smaller one in vinyl.

My first thought of was the three ply concept of a 1/4" wear surface with two plies of 1/4" core might yield a balanced panel, but I really dont know at this point. I have done some previous trials with unbalanced veneering and found that the adhesive water content was one huge cause of the panel bowing. I hadnt thought about Larry or your concern about bowing about the 12" dimension. I could use an epoxy, but I am concerned about the squeeze out ruining the bag. The last time I used some epoxy I wound up with a piece of melamine bonded to my project. I ruined a chisel and a set of planer blades getting that off. The set time for both epoxy and UF will definetly slow down production.

I took a look at Mirage's engineered flooring and found that the wear surface they use is 5/32" thick and the core looks like a conventional panel product. It is interesting that they do not offer that in anything wider than 6", but I do know the material cost will increase dramatically when you exceed that width. They claim you can sand the wear surface 3 - 5times, and that sound reasonable.

The handling is a huge problem. The pile on the trailer weighed in at around 5000lb. Each of the boards is around 100 - 140lb and my shop is far too small. Maybe I should complain to my supplier that they sent me stock that was too nice for what I was doing:)

Thks again to all. All the comments are very helpful.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj176/Brad805/Flooring%20Batch%202/DSC02160.jpg

[Art Mulder]

My problem is 90% of the boards I received in the last order of 600bdft are 12" wide x 20' long. I am having a huge problem convincing myself to cut them down
...
I guess all I am asking is, am I nuts? Should I just cut the boards down and move on.

You're nuts. Cut them in half (10' long) and rip them down to 3-4" boards.

It's a FLOOR, Brad. You're going to walk on it. You're going to put desks and tables and sofas on it. Assuming you're putting this in a reasonably normal house, I seriously doubt that you will ever notice anything over about 7' of length. Now shorts are a different matter. The previous owner here did a bedroom with mostly 3-4' short oak boards, and I notice that all the time. I did our LR/DR in oak last year, with lots of 7' boards, and I really don't notice the difference much between the 5' and the 7' boards. Like I said, it's a floor; it has desks, chairs, sofas and a coffee table all over it.

Someone else mentioned movement. I have no idea how much Jatoba moves, but I suggest you find out. Nice wide boards may look nice now, but not in 6 months if all kinds of gaps open up. Then you may regret going with anything over 4".

My oak floor in the LR is 2-1/4" boards, and I've been through 15 months with them and there are no gaps at all.

...art

ps: not a flooring installer, just my thoughts.

[Eric Larsen]

Anything more than 3-feet long is a royal pain. Here's why.

Gaps that happen at the ends of the boards are easy to fix -- knock them back in place (assuming a floating floor). Gaps that happen along the edges are a major pain. On my floor, it only seems to be the long boards that are giving me problems. I've had to rip out huge sections to fix the gaps.

(I used red oak. YMMV.)

[guy knight]

good luck in knocking a 20' board in place

[Art Mulder]

(assuming a floating floor). Gaps that happen along the edges are a major pain. On my floor, it only seems to be the long boards that are giving me problems. I've had to rip out huge sections to fix the gaps.

(I used red oak. YMMV.)

I had no trouble at all with gaps in my red oak floor, using 2-1/4" boards... I was going to ask you how wide your boards were. But then I noticed the comment about a floating floor. I've never actually seen a floating floor that had super long boards. Regardless, I'm pretty sure that Brad was planning a nailed-down solid hardwood floor.

[Larry Edgerton]

You're nuts. Cut them in half (10' long) and rip them down to 3-4" boards.

It's a FLOOR, Brad. You're going to walk on it. You're going to put desks and tables and sofas on it. Assuming you're putting this in a reasonably normal house, I seriously doubt that you will ever notice anything over about 7' of length. Now shorts are a different matter. The previous owner here did a bedroom with mostly 3-4' short oak boards, and I notice that all the time. I did our LR/DR in oak last year, with lots of 7' boards, and I really don't notice the difference much between the 5' and the 7' boards. Like I said, it's a floor; it has desks, chairs, sofas and a coffee table all over it.

Someone else mentioned movement. I have no idea how much Jatoba moves, but I suggest you find out. Nice wide boards may look nice now, but not in 6 months if all kinds of gaps open up. Then you may regret going with anything over 4".

My oak floor in the LR is 2-1/4" boards, and I've been through 15 months with them and there are no gaps at all.

...art

ps: not a flooring installer, just my thoughts.

I'm inclined to agree. When I do wood ceilings I always cut boards to length to the layout ahead of time and my longest boards are 10' long. Any given stretch of wood is going to shrink/expand at its own rate, and the wider/longer the peices the larger the gap will be as it is just a percentage of the whole. In other words if 12" of Xwood shrinks 1/4" per foot, a twelve inch peice of flooring will shrink 1/4", a 6"board will shrink 1/8", a 3" board will shrink 1/16". So with smaller boards you get smaller gaps because you have spread out the given shrinkage rate between several boards. A 1/16 gap is no big deal, but a 1/4" gap is unsightly.

The same with length, unless.... If the boards will go all the way across the room I will use long boards as the shrinkage shows up under the baseboard/ceiling trim.

To tell the truth I like the mix and match on a wood wall/ceiling as long as careful consideration is given to color mix. I kind of get an idea of what I have for colors, sometimes I seperate them, and them mix them together accordingly so that the blend is uniform and the ends are away from each other.

I recently had a house I built have a problem with Jatoba flooring. I subcontracted it out, but I did keep an eye on them. We used 5/8" baseboard, so they left 1/2 inch at the walls. The drywaller had run the board down to the subfloor so it did not have that extra 5/8 inch. It swelled enough to buckle the flooring, over an inch. The moral of the story......

Give it as much room as possible for expansion!

I built a office suite with Jatoba and I left the same gap on the inset doors that I use with Oak/Ash/Walnut, the moisture content was the same, and the finish was actually thicker of the same material. I had to retrim all of the doors and drawer fronts and refinish as spring rolled in. Luckily it was still in my shop so I did not have to suffer the embarassment.

[Brad Shipton]

The 4.5" wide planks I made were great. My last batches were no shorter than 4' and went up to 9' in length. Those were a piece of cake to make and the install went along quite quickly. Yes, time consuming to produce, but I think I have proven to be up for a silly challenge. They did shrink in width maybe 1/32" at some locations, but that is fine by me.

Guy brings up a good point. The one problem with wide planks is they dont bend when installing. It was important to use an outboard fence on the shaper to get things perfectly straight. Increasing the length will raise the bar on this problem. Hmm, another reason to toss this idea in the crapper.

Art, I hear ya. This idea will only apply to the living room and possibly some areas of the dining room. I will not waste the time in the bedrooms, and the hallways are partly done so there is no changing there.

Larry, you bring up yet another great point. A friend suggested the same. Jatoba is far far from uniform and part of its appeal is its variability.

The max length I was contemplating was 16'. That will span the width of the living room between Tigerwood bands.

By the way, Carlisle makes all sorts of special width/length floors, but you need to get out your cheque book to afford them. Some of theirs are even wider.

Lots to think about.

[Alister Orme]

For an idea on look......http://orme.com/badgerpond/poemdining.jpg

[Brad Shipton]

Alister, you are not helping to save me time:) Wait, maybe you are if the planks are butted together. Great job. I really like the uniqueness of this floor. I am not too sure about the hours making plugs or drilling holes, but thats probably no worse than the T&G operations for conventional hardwood. Is this something you milled yourself or is this a manuf product? If you made it yourself, I would be interested to hear your milling plan. The one batch I made I let it acclimate longer after rough sizing and it turned out a bit straighter than later batches where I went straight from rough (acclimatted to house) to ready for install.

Thks for sharing the pic.

[Alister Orme]

The floor is in my house and is butted-eased edge-with biscuits/ dominos .
On some planks I put relief cuts in the back.
The edges were done one at a time with a joined together festool straight edge- circa 18'.
I V carved poetry in the floor on the shopbot and filled it in latter with coloured epoxy.

It was a bear to do and I blew up the cutterhead on my 16" hammer j/p and fried the feed motor on my woodmaster sander.

My thinking started like yours when the lumber arrived .....I probably wouldn't do it for a customer, but would do it again for myself.

Major brownie points were scored with the wife.....put a value on that!

I hate working Jatoba! think Byrd headed planer or kobalt tooling

Good luck!

[Larry Edgerton]

My first job with Jatoba shattered the bearings in my Powermatic planer, the head rolling around in there ruined the planer. Gave me the reason I needed to buy my SCMI 520. Lets see, 21K job 9K planer, ya, not making any money on this job....

I did two desk tops, 11.5 hours apiece to flatten them.

I too am avoiding Jatoba on paying jobs unless its a money is no object project.

[Brad Shipton]

Alister, I thought there might be a few biscuits, well at least around the carving where you couldnt use screws.

I have a Hammer A3-31 and I have been dealing with Byrd for a few months now. I managed to get the specs and a drawing from Felder for my machine after a confidentiality agreement was signed by all parties. My Shellix is due to arrive next week provided the bearings find there way from DE to my rep in Vancouver in a reasonable order. After my last go arounds with Jatoba I was not about to try without one as the tearout led to far too much time behind or over a sander. There have been many times when I wish I would have chosen a different wood species.

Please post a close up of the engraving if you have one and dont mind sharing. Thats a nice touch. I would like to see a pic when its done.

Brad

[Neal Clayton]

brad, if your goal is to make something other than the typical short length floor seen in most houses, how about a herringbone or parquet pattern or other such thing?

that would give you an excuse to cut it to short lengths, and still wind up with something unique.

[Alister Orme]

Heres a couple.
I thought briefly of trying the byrd conversion on the hammer, but needed a planer right away so bought a 20" 4 post and slapped one in there while the parts for the other shipped from Austria....good luck with that.

http://orme.com/badgerpond/poemsfloor3.jpghttp://orme.com/badgerpond/poemsinfloor.jpg

[Larry Edgerton]

Alister. Very nice. I did not know that a shop bot could do work that nice and precise. There is one for sale close to me but what I saw it produce was not of that quality. I need to take a look at that again.

My new planer has a Tersa head, and it will plane jatoba with no tearout. It will in fact plane birdseye without popping out any eyes. AT 150 cuts per inch on the slow speed there is almost no sanding either, a big plus with wood like Jatoba.

[Brad Shipton]

Alister, that is incredible. A family heirloom for sure. One benefit of a detail such as that is I doubt anyone will ever suggest replacing the floor. I thought about adding a new planer, but I am limited to a combo for a few more years due to space. In the end it would have cost only a bit more and sure would have been handy. Thks

Larry, I suppose that the head in your SCMI is a 120mm dia with four knives. How slow of a feed speed do you use with Jatoba? I was looking at a planer with a separate feed motor for infinite adjustment, but the price of those sure steps up. I was curious if the larger head would solve the tearout problem. Great to know for the future planer purchase.

[Alister Orme]

I want Larry's Planer!!

The Shopbot is the best tool I ever bought!

It does all the box work and recently ecabinets started selling a link to make Shopbots functional with their software.....that is a neat piece of software ...I'm saving for the link now. Support from the SB community is fantasic...and the SB will drag you in new directions too...Fun stuff!

Check out their new PRS models.

[Larry Edgerton]

Brad, it is the four knife, and I run 16 FPM on all finish passes. It is a simple fourspeed transmission, from 16-72 FPM. I would consider variable speed an unnecessary complication myself. Parts break by percentage, the fewer parts......

I do like the electric table though, never want to crank a planer again.

Allister, where are you located? I like that touch. If you are not too far away I would consider hireing you to do some odd bits for me. As much as I would like to have a shop bot, I am always doing battle with computors, and like Quixote, I seldom find victory. Thank god for my wife.

[Alister Orme]

Larry,
I'm in Royersford PA.....See your in N Michigan
On the Shopbot forum there is a section for finding a local machine..If you have a need/want post a note there...the basic software that comes with the machine can easily V carve.