Need information about flooring

[Karl Card]

Please forgive me if this is not the appropriate section for this subject.

I am getting ready to start a flooring project in my office. I am using kentucky coffee that has been kiln dried
and aclimated to my office temps.

I have never done this type of project and still am a newbie in alot of ways. I have googled and searched the net
but still have not found a step by step recipe for making and installing flooring. I am needing the router bits for doing this
and saw a set at rockler for 105 bucks that were for flooring and had a nail section in it. I am assuming this would be worth it but
I am needing someone who has done this or knows to guide me in the right direction.

I have the necessary tools such as sliding router table, table saw, planer, open ended drum sander in order to do this work.

I am getting mixed emotions about whether to cut a relief cut in the back of the flooring, what is best to put between sub floor and new flooring and then what is the best satin finish for a floor as far as durablity and the ability to patch or fix an area that gets messed up.

Any help and wisdom would be appreciated. Before you ask "why are you doing this" I will go ahead and say that I need the experience, I already have the wood and the pleasure of saying "I did this"... Would also give me confidence to do other projects as well.

[steve vanosdol]

Good choice on the wood, coffee tree is one of my favorites.
I think the job will take you a lot longer then you probably think but the end result will be worth it. The back relief is an open question. Some say its not necessary and is a hold over from the old days when the lumber was wetter and therefore contracted and expanded more.
When you are done, post some pictures-I bet it will be beautiful.

[Jim Andrew]

You didn't mention how big your office is. But I say go for it, if you back is in good shape. Bending over is hard on mine. I'd get some t&g router bits, set your table up and use hold downs so your t&g is even, and git er done. As far as the sanding, think I would sand it on the floor. If it's not too big, maybe just use a 6" ros to sand it. Would skip the drum sanders on the rental market. If it is a large floor, maybe you could rent a large ROS to sand it. Check out the floor finishes in polyurethane. There are several, some do not yellow, be sure to read the can.

[Brian Libby]

It looks like the Rockler bits are the right ones. Good luck !

[Warren E. Johnson]

The previous comments are right on. I did a floor of about 600 square in cherry using the same tools you have. Before you start I suggest that you calculate the number of operations that are involved. By that I mean figure plane one side; plane other side; Joint one edge; rip to width; Square one end; Square other end; Groove one edge; Grove one end; Tongue other edge; Tongue other end; finally relieve the back. That is 11 operations for each piece. Every piece needs to be stacked between each operation. If you have 600 sq ft and each piece covers 1/2 sq ft, that is 1200 pieces times 11 operations.

I must say that the floor turned out great but it sure took a lot of shop time and made a lot of chips.

I do suggest the back relief if you plan on a width greater than 2 1/2 inches. I am surprised at how much my floor moves from winter to summer. If I had not relieved the backs I am afraid I would have some cupped boards.

Warren

[Richard Coers]

How simple do you want to get? Floors were put down for a long time, by just using a square nail (that was all that was available then) through the face. Those boards were butted together, no joinery. You can also counterbore, face screw, and glue in a wood plug to fill the screw hole. Another simple method, would be to plough a groove on the edges of all the boards, then use a spline. You could nail through the spline, just like a tongue. You didn't mention a jointer in your list of machines. Are the edges of the boards straight, or how are you going to straighten them? Dropping a whole room of boards is going to require straight stock.

[Mark Bolton]

whether to cut a relief cut in the back of the flooring, what is best to put between sub floor and new flooring and then what is the best satin finish for a floor as far as durablity and the ability to patch or fix an area that gets messed up.

I would definitely relieve the back. Between the sub and finish floor we typically run rosin paper however 15lb felt paper is common. I have heard homeowners complain that they can smell the felt paper which is why we use rosin paper. The best floor finish out there at the moment (in my opinion) is Bona traffic or traffic HD. Its a two part water borne, very hard, dries to sand very fast, and is easy to work with.

Definitely use a set of flooring cutters. The geometry allows for the nail as you mentioned as well as assembly, and a tight top joint.

As others have mentioned, its a labor intensive process on a small scale but rewarding. You may want to search the archives for techniques like using a back fence to get your boards perfectly straight and parallel. Slight imperfections amplify across the floor. Getting your pieces as perfect as possible in the fewest steps really helps.

Good Luck

[Mark Bolton]

A bit more. If you do a little research and some test runs you can get away from a lot of the conventional steps and speed up the process. A bit of it depends on how long you will be running your stock but I would suggest cutting all the bow you can out of your material and work with shorter lengths. This means more end matching but unless you have really nice material to start with its very tough to work with long stock. This is why commercial flooring has so many shorts.

At that point hopefully your material doesn't have a lot of twist requiring face jointing of every piece prior to planing. If so, I'd be reconsidering.

Once you start milling you can for instance setup a back fence on your router table eliminating the need for edge jointing the stock. Its a wasted step. You simply run your pieces against a long back fence with the crown out. The cutter mill's the profile and the edge is perfectly straight. Now when you switch cutters you simply adjust your back fence and run all the pieces. This way all your pieces are identical in width and nearly perfectly straight. If your running all this without a feeder I would assume you'll definitely be working with short lengths. Manually it would be very difficult to feed long pieces consistently.

Our routine is roughly:
- Straight line if necessary (hopefully not) and cut out all crown and defects on miter saw
- Plane material to thickness (hopefully your planer doesnt snipe too bad)
* depending on how good your material is and how much snipe you get you may opt to plane first. We opt to cut out all the bad stuff before running it through the planer (less knife wear) but it results in shorter boards and if your planer snipes it can be a problem with waste.
- Back fence, run your first profile
- Back fence, run your second profile
- End match, backing up the profiles with scrap to prevent tear out

Searching the archives will give you a lot more information.

[Karl Card]

Alot of info, good deal. My office is a small home office. It is 10.5 x 11.5. I really did not see major twist in the boards when I bought them. I have planeed some of it down for a few other projects and it does seem to run nicely thru the planer. Most of my wood is about 5 to 7 feet long and about anywhere from 7 to 10 inches wide. I do have an 8 inch jointer if needed but I also liked the thought of using the bits to square up the sides as I tonge and groove. I have seen some wood floors where the person screwed the wood flooring down from the top then used a contrasting wood to fill the whole with, it looked very nice.
I had thought about the fact that each step needs to be ran on all pieces at the same setting so that all the pieces are as perfect as possible.
Thanks alot and I should be starting this project next week. I also like the thought of just using my small ROS to sand it down after it is installed. Wioth 132 sq ft I dont think it will be to bad. Maybe use a set of knee pads to keep the knees from getting killed.

[Mike Cutler]

Karl

You may want to reconsider the ROS for sanding the floor, That's still a pretty good sized area. I used one of those square oscillating pad floor sanders from the 'Borg and it worked fantastic on my bubinga floor installation in our kitchen. Total control. The flooring drum sanders were definitely outside my skill set, but I knew I could handle a big "palm sander".

[Mark Bolton]

You may just want to run some tests if your thinking of using material that long especially if your hand feeding. It will be very difficult to feed them as accurately as needed for flooring by hand. It will still be hard with shorter pieces (say nothing longer than 3') but a little less so. You could keep your profiles as low as your cutters and nailer would allow to leave as much material on the top face for sanding. This will give you a touch more fudge factor.

I too would scrap the RO sander option. It may be unlikely that this floor goes in as flat as a commercial floor and even they required substantial sanding to flatten. A little bit of rent to allow you to work upright and do a good job in the final steps is well worth it.

You mention a top screwed floor and if you don't mind a bit of a country look some of the details can be far less critical. It all depends on what your willing to accept.

[Mark Wooden]

If you're going to make the flooring wide board like your stock is, you definitely want to joint the edges straight and parallel and run some saw kerfs in the back for relief.And you need to size it all accurately so it matches on the ends. Even the slightest bow is difficult to nail out in flooring over 5" wide and the wider stock will expand and contract proportionately more through the seasons.
A flooring cutter set is nice to have, but a simple shiplap works well if you're going to fasten through the face of the floor. Just don't nail two pieces together.