Face Nailing floor without tounge and groove

[Travis Fatzinger]

First off, I know making your own hardwood flooring is regarded as a fools errand for good reason.

We are looking for 400 sq ft of floor for a bedroom addition we put on the house. We have visited Lumber Liquidators, Lowes, Home Depot, flooring stores, etc.

We both like the look of a face nailed floor with tremont nails like was done in colonial times. I'm wondering what the true purpose of the tongue and groove on modern flooring is? Is it just to provide a place for the blind nailing, or does it also keep it from buckling during seasonal changes?

I have a 12" Crescent Joiner, 18" Oliver Planer, and an Oliver 232. I can get Ash from my local yard for $1.60 and my equipment can crank out 400 sq ft of boards no problem but I definitely don't have the time to rout tongue and groove on them.

It will only be us in the bedroom so I'm not too worried about some seasonal gaps, I just wonder how bad it will be. I'm also worried about counter sinking all the nails before renting a flooring sander. That sounds like a real pain. It seems like most of the info I found online is about face nailing tongue and grooved wide plank flooring to prevent cupping but not using it as the primary fastening system.

[Jamie Buxton]

Tongue and groove does a lot of things for you. First, it minimizes lippage -- that is, the boards edges get to be the same height above the subfloor. Second, as you drive the nails on the tongue side, the groove side gets driven tightly on to the previous board. Third, you can blind nail the flooring, so you don't need to counter sink the nails. Fourth, you get to use modern nails which are power driven -- no hand nailing.

If you face nail with cut nails, you'll be wrestling with each board to get it tight to the previous board while you nail it down. You'll be hand driving each and every nail, and hand countersinking each one. That hand nailing process will take so much time that you'd save time if you machine tongues and grooves. And the tongue and groove approach gives you a higher quality floor.

[Tom M King]

We have it in our house, and it's been fine for 38 years now. The wood was not new wood though. Ours was Heart Pine roof sheathing on a mid 19th Century train station. It was T&G, but the wood was so hard from the heat of the roof for 150 years that I could not get it to bend at all to pull any of the joints tight. I milled the tongues and groove off of it, and faced nailed it with cut nails.

I didn't want to set all the nails, so I just went over them with the drum sander. It was my drum sander, so I didn't mind risking it. Turns out, it didn't harm the sander at all, and didn't even seem to wear out the paper any faster than on a normal floor. It left a little rise over every nail, so that the floor came out looking like it had been walked on for a hundred years. I've seen floors that look like that in old General stores around here.

I don't see any advantage of using Tremont nails over regular cut nails. I just used regular cut nails.

I screwed a 2x8 down to the joists, after laying out about six or eight courses of flooring, double wedged the flooring all jambed up tight together, and drove the nails into the joists. It didn't take as long as it might sound like.

Sorry, I don' have a better picture, but remembered some of the puppy pictures on the floor. I think it's about 4-3/4" wide.

[Jim Becker]

I have some wide pine flooring that I put down to replace material that was unsafe in the 250 year old portion of our home...it's face nailed with cut nails into a new subfloor. I did do some angle nailing at the edge of each board (concealed) to further enhance the holding of the floor without whacking things too much for wood movement. When I do the next small room over, I will likely use splines this time as it's easy to cut the slots with just a router table as it will be a little more stable. The material I use doesn't come in T&G.

[Andrew Hughes]

I wonder if face nailing Ash is going to behave the same as pine. I'm also thinking your board will cup on the edges like Jamie B points out. I have 3 wide red oak floors in my house layed in 1950, Bruce flooring all T and G.

[Dave Anthony]

Most of my house has face nailed white oak flooring, originally installed ~ 60 years ago. Over the years I've replaced sections due to scratches and stains, added a cherry/walnut border. etc. We've had no problems with seasonal gaps, and you also eliminate the "dust groove" - the chamfer on the sides of each tongue & groove board. Counter sinking and filling all the nail holes can be something of a pain, though I think a bigger issue is sanding and finishing. Unlike T&G, you'll need to sand and finish in place, which can lead to dust/drying issues. You'll also use less wood - nailed flooring is typically 5/16" vs 3/4" for T&G.

[Lisa Starr]

We just did our kitchen with a variety of reclaimed wood species. (White Pine, Douglas Fir, Oak, and a few "other") I checked each piece very carefully with a metal detector and dug out anything found. I then cut 1 straight edge onto each piece, and then ripped them to the widths I needed on my table saw. Our flooring is 5" thru 14" widths. I then fired up the planer (15" max width) and planed everything to the same thickness. Next was the router table fitted with a bit for cutting a groove on both long edges. I then cut 1 end square on each piece and, using a handheld router, cut a groove in the squared end. The second end was grooved, as needed, as we cut and installed the floor.

The flooring was installed using loose tongues, which are very economical to purchase. As we installed, we pre-drilled the flooring for face nailing utilizing templates made for the particular width board. The floor was then sanded and the face nails installed. Finally we finished the flooring.

As you suspected, it is a l-o-n-g process, but we are very happy with the flooring and I would do it again.

[Peter Kelly]

I grew up in a 1600s farm house with face-nailed oak floors and as old as they were, the floor boards had a way of continually moving around with the seasons and pulling the cut nails up, leaving the heads exposed. I'd guess that you'd want to glue the boards down with construction adhesive prior to nailing to mitigate this.

[Wayne Lomman]

Lisa has the right idea for doing your own flooring with basic equipment. Its, simple, logical and effective.

Tongue and groove is also a structural element. It enables it to bridge wider spans than otherwise as the floor works as a unit rather than a group of individual planks. This makes the floor more secure to walk on. The joint also acts as a draft excluder and eliminates some of the creaking.

Sanding timber with nail heads exposed is not going to hurt the sander other than by setting it on fire. The sparks can set the dust on fire. One workshop I spent time in was burnt to the ground from exactly this cause. We tried to pull the ducting apart but it we could not keep ahead of the blaze. Cheers

[Robert Pugmire]

almost all the houses built in the 50s bay area are face nailed white oak...

seasonal gaps kinda depend on ur location but here in the bay they look fine throughout the year and refinishing is an issue down the road which is why alot go in the t&g direction

[Aaron Rosenthal]

I had to replace a bunch of white oak hallway strips due to water/iron staining, and it went fine.
Got the oak, cut to size, sanded with a 6" RO sander 36 grit, 80 then 100, after face nailing (toenail). Stain, finish, get back to life's fun.
It'll be fine.

[Travis Fatzinger]

Thanks for all the comments both for and against.

I already have a flooring nailer and a floor jack from doing previous installations. Had to use the floor jack a lot when installing cheap Bruce 2 1/4" oak that was mostly banana shaped that often times the nailer wasn't able to pull it together.

It would be nice to put down wide plank with tongue and groove and pneumatic nailer. Then sand it, then drive the cut nails in both for effect and to prevent cupping.

I do have a set of for flooring cutters for the router table. I might chuck them up and see how long it takes to do a board. See it it's worth it. The wider the boards, the less edging I'd have to do. The experiment wouldn't cost me anything at least.

[Sam Beagle]

I do this on occasion. Get a flooring jack and pull them tight. You gotta be creative. I use trim nails on angles and then lay lines and put your cut nails in. Pre-drill obviously and drive them under the surface w a bolt or anything of that kind.

[Tom M King]

I'm not sure you can even buy cut nails like I used on our floor in 1980. They were not as tapered as the last ones I tried to buy a couple of years ago. I bought a 50 lb. box from a regular building supplier. They had no kind of coating on them, and the edges were not perfectly smooth where they had been sheared. In the 38 years that we've lived on this floor, not one nail has backed out a bit.

The one pound box I bought from Home Depot a couple of years ago was ridiculous. I think I ended up putting them in the recycling. They were even more tapered than the wedges, for feathers, that I use for splitting stones, and the heads were ridiculously large.

[Sam Beagle]

Tom. That’s a good point. I noticed the same thing recently. You almost have to order speciality cut nails in. The ones there selling at the big box are more like masonry nails. Big heads and heavy taper.