Tongue and groove flooring bit sets

[Sean Rainaldi]

Hi,

I’m replacing some white oak ¾ inch tongue and groove type flooring in our home that was water damaged, and also am adding new flooring to the kitchen. The flooring measures about 2 7/16 wide including the tongue, and the actual face width is 2 1/2"; so the tongue and groove is 1/4 inch deep and 1/4 inch thick. I will be doing all the dimensioning and milling of the tongue and groove on my router table, and it appears that the Amana Flooring 55456 tongue and groove bit set is the one that most closely matches what we have in the house, which was built 50 years ago (original flooring).

Couple of questions, what is the purpose of the “Nail Slot” in the flooring?

And more importantly, the underside of each piece of flooring has a routed channel going down the center length of the stock, it measures about an inch wide, and is about 1/8” deep. What it the purpose of this channel?

Do I need to also mill this channel on the underside of each piece of flooring? Or can it be omitted? I have not found any bits or seen any profile photos or drawings of this channel on any of the net or in any router bit catalogs, so I am wondering if it needs to be included, where I could find a bit? The walls of the channel are angled, appears to be anywhere from 122 to 135 degrees away from the floor of the channel.

Lastly, does anyone know of an economical alternative of the Amana tongue and groove bit set? It seems to be the only one out there, but I only have about 200 square feet of flooring to mill and then I’m done, I think the Amana costs about 120 bucks on sale, if I could get a cheaper set that would do 200 square feet that would be fine..

Thanks for any info.

[Gary Curtis]

Two hundred feet would be possible on a router table. But not real desirable. I was going to mill about 900 feet for the house we built in timber country in the far north of California. They were practically giving away oak planks at the local mill.

But as I was acquiring machinery for my shop (new woodworker) I learned that it would be bonkers to attempt this by hand on a router table. Why?

a) you need to hog off too much material from a dense, hard wood.
b) a shaper is the right tool. It has the horsepower
c) the shaper needs a power feed. Your arms will fall off feeding by hand, and you will end up with poor thickness consistency resulting in floors that grown, rock, sag, dip, rise and creak!
d) the material will tear up router bits

A small section of floor would be ok, though. The section for the nail slot is so that you are driving only through only a small thickness of wood. Try hammering a nail through a solid 3/4" piece of oak. No fun.

The grooves on the bottom of the flooring are mandatory. Otherwise your floor will give you all the effects I listed in c). Not to mention the effects of expansion and contraction due to heat and humidity.

So I bought my flooring for $4 per running foot ( I think that is the way it is sold) Considering the amount you need, and not knowing your geographical region, look on the Internet for pre-finished flooring. You might end up saving money.

Gary Curtis
Trinity County Calif.

[michael osadchuk]

Hi,

I’m replacing some white oak ¾ inch tongue and groove type flooring in our home that was water damaged, and also am adding new flooring to the kitchen. The flooring measures about 2 7/16 wide including the tongue, and the actual face width is 2 1/2"; so the tongue and groove is 1/4 inch deep and 1/4 inch thick. I will be doing all the dimensioning and milling of the tongue and groove on my router table, and it appears that the Amana Flooring 55456 tongue and groove bit set is the one that most closely matches what we have in the house, which was built 50 years ago (original flooring).

Couple of questions, what is the purpose of the “Nail Slot” in the flooring?

And more importantly, the underside of each piece of flooring has a routed channel going down the center length of the stock, it measures about an inch wide, and is about 1/8” deep. What it the purpose of this channel?

Do I need to also mill this channel on the underside of each piece of flooring? Or can it be omitted? I have not found any bits or seen any profile photos or drawings of this channel on any of the net or in any router bit catalogs, so I am wondering if it needs to be included, where I could find a bit? The walls of the channel are angled, appears to be anywhere from 122 to 135 degrees away from the floor of the channel.

Lastly, does anyone know of an economical alternative of the Amana tongue and groove bit set? It seems to be the only one out there, but I only have about 200 square feet of flooring to mill and then I’m done, I think the Amana costs about 120 bucks on sale, if I could get a cheaper set that would do 200 square feet that would be fine..

Thanks for any info.


Sean,

Here's a thread the Canadian woodworking forum that discusses just about all of your questions....


http://forum.canadianwoodworking.com/showthread.php?t=28896&highlight=relief+cuts

good luck

michael

[Wayne Cannon]

The "nail slot" enables the cleat or staple to set below the surface so it doesn't interfere with the mating of the tongue and groove. Without the "nail slot", there is a greater likelihood of the tongue splitting as the cleat/staple is driven into the surface of the wood.

I didn't have any problems with splitting on the several dozen pieces I custom-milled when doing my floors, but several people warned me about splitting with staples (two holes versus one for a cleat).

The flooring bits are definitely preferable to standard tongue-and-groove bits, as the top surfaces meet while there is still some relief below the tongue/groove to assure a tight mating at the top where it counts.

[Dave Wagner]

On my "porch project" floor, I pre-drilled the holes before nailing and I used a nail set, it was time consuming, but worth it.

[Sean Rainaldi]

Ah I get it, you place the nail on the top corner of the tongue, not on the surface of the plank. I did not know that. Can you recommend the size and type of the nails or staples or brads I should use? Also any special kind of nail gun or nailer for my size planks?

I was confused because the original flooring had nails right on top of some of the planks, maybe added later to try to stop squeaks? I did not see any nails on the tongues themselves maybe they were installed in correctly.

Also I am kind of leaning towards buying pre made planks due to above suggestions, but if I change my mind again, can you recommend a power feeder for my router table? It's just a garden variety table, 24 x 36 made by Rousseau, has a woodpeckers lift, 3.25 hp 7518 PC router.

[Rod Sheridan]

Sean, I'm not being smart, since I don't own a router table I'm curious, is a router table strong enough for a power feeder?

The three wheel feeder I have on a shaper weighs about 150 pounds. It exerts hundreds of pounds of force on the workpiece.

How would a router table resist bending with those loads?

Regards, Rod.

[Ronald Mancini]

I've made thousands of feet of T&G. First you need to plane the boards to the same thickness. Second, You need a minimum 1.5hp shaper with a 0.5hp feeder. Now you need shaper cutters, and you are in the T&G business. Buy it unless you are as stubborn and cheap as I am, but I can throw out some T&G for floors, ceilings, or walls whenever the need comes up.

[Sean Rainaldi]

Ronald,

I have a Porter Cable 3.25 hp 7518 router and the Deluxe router table on this page: http://www.ptreeusa.com/routerTables.htm

Would a power feeder work on my set up?

Rod - I don't know that's what I'm trying to find out...

[Tony Joyce]

"The grooves on the bottom of the flooring are mandatory. Otherwise your floor will give you all the effects I listed in c). Not to mention the effects of expansion and contraction due to heat and humidity."

While not being a wood engineer, I have run tens of thousands of feet of flooring plus the same of T&G, V-Joint paneling over the past 20 some odd years. The necessity of grooves or reliefs in the back of flooring is based more on myth and preconception, than fact. If it were indeed mandatory why is it not put in paneling or siding for that matter. I have heard numerous reasons why it should be there, from the expansion and contraction reason to the theory that it's there to cut weight to reduce shipping charges. While I do run reliefs in all the flooring I run, the main reason I do it is so I don't have to explain to all my customers why it doesn't need to be there(preconception).

I find it humorous that everyone thinks it should be in flooring, but not in solid wood paneling. The same reasoning should also apply there, shouldn't it? I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion, just giving my point of view, based on my experiences.

If you know what a nail groove is you should know where it's located at. This location is where the head of the nail or staple should be when driven. There are available in most areas where flooring is sold nailers/staplers that can be rented to install flooring with, both manual and pneumatic. They will have a base plate that will set them on the wood at the correct angle and distance from the top edge.

Two hundred feet of coverage is alot of wear and tear on a router! Especially Oak. Roughly 2,000 linear feet, 1,000 for tongue and 1,000 for groove, based on 2.25" face.

[Wayne Cannon]

Flooring cleats or staples should be long enough to completely, but barely, penetrate from the top edge of the tongue down through the sub-floor AT THE ANGLE AT WHICH THEY ARE DRIVEN.

Set the depth carefully to just set the top of the staple or cleat flush, or even slightly above flush. Staples or cleats that are too high will interfere with boards going together, and if driven too deep, will tend to split the tongue.

I heard both sides of the staple and flooring cleat debate (a flooring cleat looks like a cut nail the shape of an inverted "L" with a rectangular cross-section, i.e., a one-sided head about the same size as the crown of a staple). After a lot of reading and talking, I opted to go with flooring cleats instead of staples. Most, but not all, flooring nailers will drive either. The arguments are that staples tend to split the thin/weak base of the tongue because they are wedging the grain apart with two round legs instead of one. It's well-known that round nails tend to force the grain apart, making splitting more likely than a rectangular cross-section, cut nail that tends to tear the grain as it passed through. The flooring cleats encourage this even more by having sharp squared-off steps in the side of the nail instead of a smooth wedge. Staples appear to be harder to remove than cleats initially -- I assume this is due to the glue coating on the staples; however, test reports I've read indicate that this is short-lived and that after aging, staples are easier to pull. A quick Google search will turn up many a lively discussion of the relative merits of staples versus flooring cleats.

[Peter Quinn]

I used to work in a flooring mill, just over a year, ran 140,000 LF per week for 70 weeks, you get the idea. I made a little flooring. DON"T DO IT MAN! Floor boards are thin enough to be flexible, and flexible enough to be nailed down and held in place, assuming they are milled accurately. Once side gets held down with nails, the other by the last tongue you nailed down, so they had better line up. The floor nailer helps bump the boards together as it spits in the nail. Floor boards are not typically flattened, but the machines they are run on hold them flat to the machines table as they are milled. It helps to flatten them some what and keep things consistent. You will have one heck of a time trying to duplicate this over any great area with a router. You just can't hold the boards flat enough to the table over the lengths needed over the volume to be produced. And the small diameter of a router bit tends to tear out the leading edge far more than a shaper or molder. A power feeder will help with the consistency if your table is stout enough support one, maybe a small one is sufficient for 2 1/2" strip flooring?

I would seriously consider buying the flooring unless it is something so rare it cannot easily be duplicated except in a custom manner, and 2 1/2" oak strip flooring is not particularly rare. By the time you add up the cutters, the abuse on your router table, the price of the lumber, and your time, you have spent almost what it will cost to buy the product, so you are left doing it for the joy of it. And if you think running thousands of feet of flooring is a joy, I have news for you!

Oh, on the subject of those relief cuts, I'd include them. You don't find them on wainscot because other than Spider man, people don't walk on walls, so no one cares or knows if they rock a bit under foot traffic! In the old days GOOD casings used to have them too, but not so much any more. They let the floor ride over minor defects in the substrate, and without them every little bit of crap on the floor becomes a rocking point. They are not tradition, they are not arbitrary, they make good sense. Try banging in some flooring without them! I make them for door saddles on the router table using a 1/2" core box bit raised 1/8", I would put two on a 2 1/2" board rather than a single 1", though a dado on the TS also works well and will give you 1" quicker.