Beech flooring project

[kent wardecke]

I bought 4000 bdft of tie siding. Random widths of 3" to 17" most of the boards were about 9' long. The wood was 99% beech, the sawmill owner set the wood aside for us. we cut the boards into 4" planks with a Woodmizer cutting 8 boards at time. I was surprised by the low yield about 2000 bdft of planks which will yield about 1600 sqft of 3 1/8" tongue and groove flooring.

[kent wardecke]

Sorry for the pictures, I haven't figured out how to rotate images on this site

[Scott T Smith]

Flatsawn Beech tends to move a lot during the drying process.

[Tom Bender]

You got 1600 sq ft out of 2000 board feet? Ok you must have had it sawn to 3/4". You will loose some to drying defects. Any boards that have been in the sun for a couple of hours may have many small surface checks. these will weaken the lumber or affect finishing and appearance. These may not be problems, I don't have experience with DIY flooring but I would have concerns for fine furniture.

[Mark Bolton]

Sounds like your math may be pretty much on point. You bought 4MBF, and wound up with 1.6MBF cleaned up and usable. A shade low but if the material wasnt sawn for grade it doesnt sound bad. Gives you some insight into what yields can be expected.

I would echo Scott's reply that Beech can be pretty wiley in the drying and is a bear with regards to hardness and tearout with machining. We bought a massive batch of KD Beech a long time ago and really enjoyed it but your tooling better be super sharp and swap out for re-sharp often. The stuff that has some quarter in it is really pretty. The flatsawn can be very blotchy and difficult to finish but if your fine with character grade its fine.