$0.20 bdft for beech for floors

[kent wardecke]

We can buy bundles of cut offs from a rail road tie Mill. 1000 bdft bundles off mixed species for $200. By the time you sort out the culls and other wood it's closer to $0.40 bdft. $0.25 to have it dry kilned and $0.35 ft to have it milled. So it's $1.00 a ft for wide plank flooring. Worth it? Should I run the other way? Beech is known too have stability issues, does kiln drying help?
There's not a lot on SMC about beech except plane blocks

[Scott Winners]

American Beech only moves, on paper, a tiny bit more than white oak. How is your climate control?

[Richard Coers]

Depends on what kind of machinery you have and how much free time. Lots of labor and machining time making railroad tie cut offs into flooring. I'm also thinking they do a center heart cut, so lots of radial checking if those pieces have set around very much.

[kent wardecke]

They do center heart cut. They also use big wood , 24" and bigger.
We'd be using a Grizzly 20" planer with a helix cutter and a 5hp Oliver table saw
The House will be heated and air conditioned.
What about blue stain? I've heard it's a problem.

First I'm trying to get something for cheap
Second I want something different. It's a mid century home and natural beech has that modern look

[Bradley Gray]

Around here that's called tie siding. I buy a couple packs a year, mixed species, 8'8" long (tie Length). 700bf for $175. I dry the best and use the culls for farm repairs, whatever, green.

A long way from finished flooring.

I would look for a good deal on pre-finished plank flooring. The factory applied finishes are super durable.

[Scott T Smith]

We can buy bundles of cut offs from a rail road tie Mill. 1000 bdft bundles off mixed species for $200. By the time you sort out the culls and other wood it's closer to $0.40 bdft. $0.25 to have it dry kilned and $0.35 ft to have it milled. So it's $1.00 a ft for wide plank flooring. Worth it? Should I run the other way? Beech is known too have stability issues, does kiln drying help?
There's not a lot on SMC about beech except plane blocks

Kent, those are some great prices that you list, and this may be worth your while. A few comments....

1 - wood only moves in relation to changes in moisture content.
2 - the wider the plank, the greater the visible wood movement.
3 - Beech is commonly used for flooring in Europe.
4 - the outermost boards will have a higher percentage of sapwood in them and be more prone to cupping than boards cut closer to the tie. HOWEVER, the other boards are usually a higher grade (fewer knots) than boards milled closer to the pith, so this is a plus.

If I were going down this path, I would do the following.

1 - find out from the mill exactly how "mixed" the species are in the bundles. Ideally I would want 75% or greater of the same percentage.
2 - Plan on making a narrower plank floor - such as 3" strips, give or take, or a mixed width floor such as 2.5", 4" and 5.5" width planks. From a wood movement standpoint, narrower is better.
3 - Cull the lumber based upon grade and species.
4 - Kiln dry and sterilize down to 6% - 8% MC.
5. Store in a humidity controlled location after kiln drying.
6. Straight line rip the blanks and rip to width (do this after kiln drying - very important!). Sizing the blanks before kiln drying allows you to dry only usable wood strips - thus saving you on kiln costs, but the narrow strips are more likely to warp or crook during drying, which means that you'll have more discards after drying (or you will have to trim the crooked pieces down to short lengths - changing the aesthetic of the floor). If you leave the boards wide, they tend to stay straighter during the drying process. So you'll pay more for kiln drying, but net out with more usable lumber.
7 - do the millwork.
8 - store in humidity control until installation. Make sure that the HVAC is operational in the house for a couple of weeks before installation, or put some dehumidifiers inside the house to help dry the subfloor down before flooring installation.

From a waste / loss standpoint, typically if you're making mid to long plank length flooring (6' and longer strips), you will have around 30% loss from gross board footage to net square footage. So when I'm making flooring, if I want to net 650 square feet I need to start with at least 1000 bd ft of raw material.

Waste increases if you only want same width planks but are starting with random width lumber. Plan on 50% yield loss in this scenario.

Waste also increases if you're trying to net wide pieces, because of the higher likelihood for outer cuts from the log to cup during drying, relating them to the scrap pile after drying.

So if you buy 1000 bd ft of raw material, sort the culls and other material for a 50% loss, and then make random width narrower plank, longer length flooring from what's left over, you're looking at approximately netting 350 square feet of flooring from your 1000 board feet of rough sawn material.

Even with that amount of waste, spending .60 per board foot for kiln drying and millwork is a deal. In many location's, for small jobs such as yours you'd be looking at $2 - $3 per board foot for drying from green plus all of the millwork. The costs that you list are more in line with what a company that dries and moulds hundreds of thousands of board feet of flooring per year would incur. If you're able to source it for that, you will still net out ahead versus buying commercially sourced flooring.

[Adam Herman]

blue stain can vary in hardness quite a lot. inspect your source carefully if you want to use it for flooring. I would find it much too soft generally.

I have used it a lot for trim and a stairway railing.

what about an end grain floor? do they have end grain cuts of beach from cutting the ties to length?

[kent wardecke]

You're right. But my dentist has prefinished wood floors. But I'll keep that option in mind

[kent wardecke]

Scott that's a lot to think about. Either you've done it before or you did the math then went to lumber liquidators. Thanks

[roger wiegand]

You might ask around-- when I did my shop floor I called my supplier of birdseye maple flooring in MI (subsequently gone out of business) and asked what they had that was cheap he said he could give me "mixed domestic hardwood" for $1/sqft. It was high quality stuff, perfectly milled and dried and in reasonable lengths. I've counted 17 species in my shop floor, which is kind of fun. It also looks nice!

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[Ron Selzer]

You might ask around-- when I did my shop floor I called my supplier of birdseye maple flooring in MI (subsequently gone out of business) and asked what they had that was cheap he said he could give me "mixed domestic hardwood" for $1/sqft. It was high quality stuff, perfectly milled and dried and in reasonable lengths. I've counted 17 species in my shop floor, which is kind of fun. It also looks nice!

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Definitely like that look.
Ron

[Prashun Patel]

I've used a bunch of American Beech right from my yard over the past couple years. And that's with imperfect drying. It looks and works halfway between maple and cherry. It is plenty hard and I have found it to be just as stable as either cherry or maple. Granted, I am using predominantly quartersawn stock. Each time i use it I wonder why it is not more prevalent in American furniture, floors, or instruments. I turned a bunch of the *branches* green. Even that stuff was relatively stable. It feels even more closed grain than maple or cherry; that is, it burnished quickly when sanded at higher grits.

The grain is subtle and the color a lovely pinkish amber (there can be variations between heart and sapwood, caveat emptor).

My data point of exactly 1 tree leads me to believe American Beech would be great as a floor choice.

[Scott T Smith]

Scott that's a lot to think about. Either you've done it before or you did the math then went to lumber liquidators. Thanks

lol. We make custom flooring on a regular basis.

[Ron Citerone]

Definitely like that look.
Ron


I like it also, very nice!