Hardwood floors

[Michael MacIntyre]

I have cut down around 50 Maple trees last year and stacked them and I have now brought them to my uncles saw mill. I have not attempted hardwood floors before and I am wondering how thick I should cut the boards. I was thinking about 1.5 inches leaving me .5 inches to plain later to make the boards nice and flat. I was also going to very the width and adjust it later on the table saw. Any comments / suggestions would be appreciated.

Michael

[John Keeton]

When you say 50 maple trees, how big are we talking here? If they are of the size to make decent lumber, that is going to be a bunch of flooring:eek:

On the thickness, depending on the width of the boards, I would stay closer to 1 1/8". At 1.5", you will waste a lot of wood in planing.

For flooring, in my opinion and for my tastes, I would not go over 5" wide. Cupping can be a real issue on flooring wider than that.

[Brad Wood]

most real hardwood flooring is 3/4

At least all that I've ever noticed/seen

[John Keeton]

Brad, I think we agree on the 3/4" finished thickness. But, Michael is dealing with green wood, and will need to leave extra room for cupping, and shrinkage in order to be assured of ending up with a clean 3/4". I know he posted about starting with 1.5" and planing .5", but I assume he is wanting to end up with 3/4"??

[David Keller NC]

Actually, guys, the finished thickness of hardwood flooring (real hardwood, not the laminate stuff) is generally 1/2", and sometimes less if it's an exotic wood like Jatoba. There's reasons you wouldn't want the finished flooring thicker than 1/2" - mainly, driving the nails through the tongue down into the sub-flooring. It takes a great deal of power to drive wire 16 gauge nails through maple or hickory flooring, and if your gun doesn't have sufficient power, you'll wind up setting every one of those nails on your hands and knees with a nail set and a hammer - don't ask me how I know that.;)

[Caspar Hauser]

I've put down a fair few square of flooring, strip hardwood, oak, maple, wide pine etc and it has all been 3/4" finished thickness or thicker, the only flooring I've ever seen at 1/2" is some prefinished laminated Bamboo floating floor.

A flooring nailer, manual or pneumatic will do the job quite nicely.

CH

[Michael MacIntyre]

You are correct, It is green, cutting it, drying it again and then planning it to size. Thanks for the advice with not wider then 5 inch. I have lengths of 8 to 11 foot logs varying from 8 inch diam. to 24 inch. I cut a fair bit because it is my first time attempting flooring and I'm not sure how much board feet exactly I will get out of each log (milling will be knew to me) and I'm not sure how I will get along with drying it (stickering it) with some warping I'm sure, then working with it into the floor. So the excess is more of a back up supply for my learning curve.

Michael

[John Keeton]

Personally, I would make firewood from the smaller stuff. 8" will not yield enough heartwood to fool with, and you have the center portion of the log that is not stable. You would be lucky to get 1" lumber from an 8" log.

I would think the 24" would be minimum, but others may disagree.

[Michael Conner]

If I want to ensure that I end up with a 3/4" hardwood after kiln drying and planing, I either cut to 5/4 or 1 and 1/8". I go thinner if I have good logs, thicker if they are not so good. However, I have never sawn maple as we don't have much of that around here.

[Steve Clardy]

Standard cut thickness at the mill for 4/4 lumber is 1-1/8
That allows for drying shrinkage, which ends up about 1" or 1-1/6" after air drying


This is so it will finish out at 3/4

[Tony Joyce]

In this area "real hardwood" is 3/4" thick. I've run several thousand feet of flooring the last 25 years and have never been ask for thinner, thicker yes. Even the Jatoba we resell is full 3/4" thick. The local flooring company has always had 3/4", even after it was bought out by Harris Tarkett they have continued to run the 3/4" product. All this is run from 4/4 material. I've run widths to 9-1/4" wide, if your lumber is flat after kiln drying and conditioning it will generally stay flat. Just my experience & my .02 cents.

[Scott T Smith]

Standard cut thickness at the mill for 4/4 lumber is 1-1/8
That allows for drying shrinkage, which ends up about 1" or 1-1/6" after air drying


This is so it will finish out at 3/4

+1.

No need to cut it thicker than 5/4, and 1-1/8 would result in the minimal amount of loss.

Of bigger concern is the fact that the logs are aging. The longer that the wood stays in the log, the greater the amount of degrade. It's best to mill and sticker as soon as possible after logging.

[Peter Quinn]

My boss makes a lot of flooring, all of it milled to .770" finished thickness. We do an occasional 1/2" or 3/8" floor with a small tongue, but that is generally for glue down applications over the top of another floor or concrete substrate and allows for minimal resurfacing in the future. It also provides little strength to the building envelope as a whole which is not a concern in cases where thin flooring is used.

I can't tell you how thick to mill the green lumber to wind up at 3/4" finished product, but I can tell you all the material we get goes into a 6 head molder hit and miss planed at 15/16" and comes out clean as a whistle. Flooring doesn't have to be flattened like furniture material so starting at 1.5" may be excessive. I can tell you that maple is the most likely candidate to acquire sticker stains in the kiln or when air dried, and that pretty much ruins a clear grade maple floor, so be careful how the material is handled and what the stickers are made of.

[Virgil Johnson]

Oh. After drying and milling don't forget to cut a back relief.
Helps with stability and getting a flat installation.

I might be jumping gun at this point - but something to keep in mind for later.

Virgil