Is there a such thing as an "odd width" to flooring, that would interest nobody?

[dirk martin]

Is there a standard width to flooring boards? Or, maybe I should say "range of widths" ?
I mean, do they typically fall on the inch, or the half inch? Are typical flooring boards 3" or 4" or 5", etc?
Or will people shop for 3.5" and 4.5" and 5.5" etc?
Or, when someone wants 5" wide flooring, is it expected that they'll take anything 4.5" to 5.5"?
Do people ever do "random width" ?

Here's the reason for my question....

I've got a pile of kiln dry red oak, of all different widths. I'm going to cut it all, and mill it into flooring.
To get the "most" out of each board, and minimize waste, I'll, of course, end up with a variety of widths.
So, when I have a board 7" wide, to I mill that into a 6.5" flooring board, or a 6"? Or do I just mill it into the widest I can, and not worry how close I am to 6.5" or 7"?

Right now I'm simply curious if there's such thing as a "standard width" to flooring boards or not ? Is it possible to create a thousand feed of an "odd width" that nobody would buy?

[Rick Potter]

I think the random width comes in three sizes, small medium and large. Don't know what the numbers are, but if you make more widths than that, it will be hard to match them for a row.

My floor came in random lengths. There were maybe four lengths to work with, so that the installer could have some semblance of order. They were all the same width, in my case 3". I believe my manufacturer also made 2" and 4 or 5" also.

Rick Potter

[Frank Drew]

Dirk,

You might try to get a customer first then mill to spec; the customer might be a homeowner or a flooring installer.

Or call a local flooring company or even a contractor to ask what widths they'd recommend.

[Peter Quinn]

The place I work makes a lot of custom flooring. The majority of it is either on the inch or some even metric number for foreign orders. But there is some call for flooring on the 1/2", typically at the scale we operate a whole floor is sold on the 1/2". On wide plank random widths are often requested or suggested as a cost saver. Typically 3-5 sizes will go into an order, say 5"-9", roughly equal lineal footage of each size. Another popular combo is random 7",9",11" in common or country grades. It looks great in the right setting. We have a lot of old colonial style homes here in New England, and the random widths match that style well.

Most "strip flooring" goes in one width for ease of install, and visually three different narrow widths had little impact IMO. As others have said it may be better to land a client an mill to spec than mill on speculation and try to sell.

[Brad Shipton]

I have made random width flooring too. You really need to know the room sizes for this to work. I think the random look is for a very specific type customer that wants something unique, and I would not build that for re-sale unless you think you have the right customer/contractor in mind for the end product.
Brad

[dirk martin]

Dirk,

You might try to get a customer first then mill to spec; the customer might be a homeowner or a flooring installer.

Or call a local flooring company or even a contractor to ask what widths they'd recommend.


The problem with getting a customer first is all the waste, or all the raw stock needed to fill the order. As you guys know, if someone wants 5" planks, I'll have a ton of waste from my boards that are 6.5" - 11".

So, rather then wasting all that edge stock, I want to mill those into their optimum widths. So, that's why I'm wondering if I should shoot for even inches, or if 1/2 inches are fine.

As long as I end up with a minimum of 50-100bf of each width, it sounds to me from what you guys are saying, that hitting a particular width, on the head, isn't so important....as long as I have my final boards sorted to width to ease installation.

[scott vroom]

Another poster gave you some good advice: Find a customer first then mill to his spec.

If you must mill prior to finding a customer then avoid random widths...it's a PITA to install and you'll limit your market. Pick a width that maximizes your yield and make all planks the same width.




Is there a standard width to flooring boards? Or, maybe I should say "range of widths" ?
I mean, do they typically fall on the inch, or the half inch? Are typical flooring boards 3" or 4" or 5", etc?
Or will people shop for 3.5" and 4.5" and 5.5" etc?
Or, when someone wants 5" wide flooring, is it expected that they'll take anything 4.5" to 5.5"?
Do people ever do "random width" ?

Here's the reason for my question....

I've got a pile of kiln dry red oak, of all different widths. I'm going to cut it all, and mill it into flooring.
To get the "most" out of each board, and minimize waste, I'll, of course, end up with a variety of widths.
So, when I have a board 7" wide, to I mill that into a 6.5" flooring board, or a 6"? Or do I just mill it into the widest I can, and not worry how close I am to 6.5" or 7"?

Right now I'm simply curious if there's such thing as a "standard width" to flooring boards or not ? Is it possible to create a thousand feed of an "odd width" that nobody would buy?

[dirk martin]

The place I work makes a lot of custom flooring. The majority of it is either on the inch or some even metric number for foreign orders. But there is some call for flooring on the 1/2", typically at the scale we operate a whole floor is sold on the 1/2". On wide plank random widths are often requested or suggested as a cost saver. Typically 3-5 sizes will go into an order, say 5"-9", roughly equal lineal footage of each size. Another popular combo is random 7",9",11" in common or country grades. It looks great in the right setting. We have a lot of old colonial style homes here in New England, and the random widths match that style .

Interesting, Peter. I didn't realize people did random widths. I'd think it would look "messy" or poorly planned, with random widths. But if you say it looks good, I'll take your word for it. Very interesting....

[dirk martin]

I have made random width flooring too. You really need to know the room sizes for this to work. I think the random look is for a very specific type customer that wants something unique, and I would not build that for re-sale unless you think you have the right customer/contractor in mind for the end product.
Brad

Thats what I was expecting to hear, Brad. But by random, do you know if each width still fell iicon the inch or half inch? Or did some even fall everywhere in between? How random is random?

[dirk martin]

Another poster gave you some good advice: Find a customer first then mill to his spec.

If you must mill prior to finding a customer then avoid random widths...it's a PITA to install and you'll limit your market. Pick a width that maximizes your yield and make all planks the same width.


I think I agree. But I should pick a few widths, to minimize waste. I'm just wondering if I should select width on the inch, or if the half inch is ok.....

[Jay Jolliffe]

I think I'd pick what ever works for the width of the boards you have. Why mill them to a width so you have a lot of waste....What makes the difference if its to the inch or 1/2 ?.....

[johnny means]

There is no such thing as random width flooring. Each course must be a particular width along its full length. This means that the manufacturer must be sure to provide a certain ratio of each width when doing varied widths. This would actually call for more care and planning than a single width floor.

[Frank Drew]

"Random" refers to the finished look: it's not 5" then 7" then 9" repeated in that order all across the room, you mix them up for an irregular, unplanned look. It might be easier to get that varied, "random" look with four rather than three different widths.

I think just about any hardwood floor looks better than wall-to-wall carpet throughout the house, but strip (2-3/8"?) is probably my least favorite type, or rather, width.

[Brad Shipton]

Dirk, I had the luxury of knowing exactly what room I was putting the stock in. I made sure to make enough of any length to do a full run of any room and stacked it so I could find the pieces when it was time to install. The reason I did this was my stock showed up and it varied from 6" to almost 12" wide x 24' long. Some of the boards were cut to the nearest 1/2", but that was easy for me and it helped reduce the waste a little. I recall the finished widths were 10.5" wide, 8.5", some 7", and a small amount of 6". I kept them stacked separately and varied width locations during the install to balance the look. I like the finished product, but the 10.5" width was pushing it. I did about 800bdft this way.

Brad

[Peter Quinn]

Interesting, Peter. I didn't realize people did random widths. I'd think it would look "messy" or poorly planned, with random widths. But if you say it looks good, I'll take your word for it. Very interesting....


It looks great if done well. Best floor I've seen IMO for the right space. I'm not an installer, but I have had occasion to put a few of these in, I've seen a bunch of them done by others, and you don't give this work to monkeys. The installer has to be familiar with installing a multi width floor, you have to plan your courses, stagger your joints, shorts look real bad in wide plank format, so long boards are preferred. If you ever see a real old pre industrial revolution farm house, you get the idea. Farmers certainly did not whack off a bunch of width that had been milled by hand to some random number so every board was the same. Thats a product of mass production and large scale manufacturing. When every part of the job was done by hand, the trees determined the width of the courses, not the saw. A nice random width floor can give an unparalleled authenticity to a new house trying to look old. Nothing says new house like strip floor from the borg where 5' is a long run!

Its best you know the room layouts or to work with a contractor that can order what he needs accordingly. This is not the floor for just everyone. For instance I live in a bungalow, and I feel such a floor would be pretty out of place in my house. The last one I put in was 5"-9"cherry, and it took some careful planning to make it go well, it was a big rectangular addition with no jogs that was pretty easy to lay out. Im sure you can imagine how complicated a whole house could get. But honestly, if you go over by 15% and keep the lineal footage close to equal, the runs sort of take care of them self once you get going. Its trickier than single size strip floor, but its not rocket science by any means.

On the 1/2" thing, its pretty much a moot point on less than say 20K BF. That 1/2" will barely add up to a closet on a couple of thousand feet. I've also seen people order several different sizes for the same house but use all one size in each room. This works well for narrower material (3"-6") in the right house where some natural logical transition strip is possible, or different sizes can run different directions. But its more of a special case, so again, sell the job first on something like that. Or perhaps your material makes several smaller jobs rather than one large one?

[robert raess]

2 1/4", 3" or 3 1/4",4",5",7",9". 3,5,7 is a common random install.I have seen 3 1/4"& 4 1/4" but above that it is as stated.Some mills will offer unusual sizes such as 6' or 8" but the bigger mills you won't see that.I'm speaking of 3/4"x Hardwood,more specifically Oak.Check NOFMA.Also as a Hardwood floor specialist, i like it when all the mills make their T&G profiles the same,i.e. the T is rounded and the groove is rounded.It comes in handy when doing custom installs where you mix diff. species.It is also easier than installing flooring with a square tongue.Also NOFMA will help you grade your wood to NOFMA standards.Hope you do well on this project. Rob

[dirk martin]

2 1/4", 3" or 3 1/4",4",5",7",9". 3,5,7 is a common random install.I have seen 3 1/4"& 4 1/4" but above that it is as stated.Some mills will offer unusual sizes such as 6' or 8" but the bigger mills you won't see that.I'm speaking of 3/4"x Hardwood,more specifically Oak.Check NOFMA.Also as a Hardwood floor specialist, i like it when all the mills make their T&G profiles the same,i.e. the T is rounded and the groove is rounded.It comes in handy when doing custom installs where you mix diff. species.It is also easier than installing flooring with a square tongue.Also NOFMA will help you grade your wood to NOFMA standards.Hope you do well on this project. Rob

Rounded like this, Robert?

233917

[Frank Drew]

[Random width flooring] looks great if done well. Best floor I've seen IMO for the right space. ... long boards are preferred. If you ever see a real old pre-industrial revolution farm house, you get the idea. Farmers certainly did not whack off a bunch of width that had been milled by hand to some random number so every board was the same. A nice random width floor can give an unparalleled authenticity to a new house trying to look old. Nothing says new house like strip floor from the borg where 5' is a long run!

I agree with all that, and remember that in the old days rooms were smaller and boards left longer, so coming up with enough full length material to floor a room wouldn't have been too difficult; and, of course, the widths would have varied as they were grabbed from the pile.