Tongue & groove fit

[beenthere]

Handy Andy
So when your floor dries out (from furnace running in the winter and the wood shrinks), you will expect the entire floor to shrink as a single unit?  Apparently you are not going to nail it down in the tongue on each board. That should be interesting.

[flip]

I was watching an episod of This Old House a few weeks ago and they were showing a restoration of a stage.  The company was using hard maple and trying to reproduce the stage exactly as it was for "accoustical" correctness.  They were nailing down with cut nails as the original was and they showed one of the workers putting a nail in the tongue.  You can well imagine what happens when you put a wedge shaped nail in the same direction as the grain, ker-split.  They calimed it was ok because the original was cracked too.  I can't see how they could get the floor to lay properly with split tongues and cracks in the flooring, yuck.

[Handy Andy]

  As to the glue, I would nail as usual, but it does make the wood contract differently, and holds out the cracks.  I have installed manufactured floors that recommended glueing, so figure it will just basically make it into one sheet of wood nailed securely to the floor. 

[beenthere]

If you mean by "manufactured floors", the flooring product made up of reconstituted wood or laminated plys, then that gluing may work.

Rather strong doubts it will work on strip solid-wood floors that this thread seems to be talking about. I suspect the tension will build and large cracks will form rather than miniscule cracks between each strip. But you can let us know how it works out. I'm curious to know 

[woodworker9]

Handy Andy

I don't want to be contradictory, but your plan to glue AND nail a solid hardwood floor is destined for failure, for the same reasons why you wouldn't want to attach a table top to it's leg base with solid fasteners.  The wood is going to move, no matter what you do.  If you glue the boards together, and then nail it down, the glue or the wood is going to fail.  It's usually the wood, and it's always in the form of cracks.

I'd hate for you to go through all that hard work to end up with a floor you'll need to remove, anyway.

As beenthere has stated, manufactured floors are layered, and built like plywood.  While they still do move a 'wee' bit, they are stable enough to glue together, and the stability of cross dimensional grain lamination keeps the floor from buckling, which is why it is allowed to float without failure.

Sure hope this post isn't thought of as out of line.  I'm just trying to help.

WW9

[Cedarman]

Isn't laminated flooring all sealed up so moisture can't come and go as in regular flooring?

[HORSELOGGER]

Hey Andy    Your idea to glue the floor is a fine one, although it might not accomplish what you are looking for. The main reason I know of to glue a solid wood floor down to wood sub floor is to minimize cupping movement in wide pieces. Bostik, among other adhesive manufacturers makes a urethane based glue that has a tenacious bond but when set will stretch some seasonally, allowing the wood to do the same. I had a guy buy 2 1/4 & 3 1/4 ash from me about 5 years ago , and he wanted to run the flooring parallel with the joists so his plan was to glue the entire floor( self installed) I was skeptical then as I believed the general conventional thinking that you dont glue wood down, it needs to move or it will crack it self up. Well, I researched a little and found that it was common practice to glue solid wood down to concrete floors in a bed of urethane mastic over radiant heat! And that it was a reccommended practice by the flooring manufacturers associations.About 2 years ago I started using a installer from the Chicago suburbs on some of my jobs, a 3rd generation installer, who glues everything over 3 1/4 ". I challenged his thinking last year by showing him some 5 " wide white oak and hickory floors that were not glued ( or end matched, which he was also skeptical about) He has changed his thinking some as he just started a 4 " white oak floor for me yesterday and he is not gluing it.However the 8 " red oak white oak recycled barn wood floor over radiant heat he glued.All this long windedness is to say : the statement that your floor is destined for failure if you glue it , in my experience is not accurate.

Also, regarding t&g fit.. snug, not bang together tight. I have used dedicated carbide insert heads for years. 5 minute tool changes and dead accurate with no adjustment makes consistent flooring possible. ( 5 head Weinig moulder)

[Justin L]

I must dissagree Horselogger! There would be a difference in gluing the flooring to the subfloor vs gluing the flooring to itself. If you glue each board to the subfloor or concrete, any shrinkage will show up at the joints, if you glue the flooring together at the joints, the whole floor will try to move as one board. Then any movement gets transferred to the outside edges, and if they don't move enough you get cracks. This opinion is also worth exactly what you had to pay for it

[HORSELOGGER]

Like I said, ...it probably will not accomplish what he is looking for ( reread first sentence of my last post) But gluing in general is not a guarantee of wood failure. Wood laid in a mastic will also have the adhesive migrate up into the between board joint  as it is pressed into place.Just tellin like I seen it... and my opinion is worth double what yours is

[crowder888]

Has anyone on here had any success making T&G flooring on a Woodmaster?  I got a set of knives from Woodmaster yesterday and spent most of the afternoon making the guides to run the pieces (to the specs of the manufacturer).  After checking alignment and tweeking a lot I ran a few pieces and noticed that there is plenty of slop between the tounge and grove...about 1/32".  I don't see how this is acceptable at all.  At first I assumed it was my guides but after double checking it was fine.  I took a look at the knives and they are made that way.  So back to my original question...any Woodmaster owners make flooring on their machines?

[Handy Andy]

  A cousin made his own flooring on a woodmaster.  Used black locust. I asked him about it, said he sent the boards through on edge, fixed guides to hold them in place as they went through.  Beautiful floor. 

[BBTom]

This may seem like a stupid question, but I haven't found the answer online yet, and I know the Forumites would know. 

Is there a standard for the height of the tongue and groove? (distance from bottom of flooring piece to bottom of tongue)

What does everyone here use?

[scsmith42]

I'm going to chime in on the gluing discussion...

My house was built by someone else in 1990.  I have met a number of the subcontractors that worked on the house, and they all have reiterated what a perfectionist the original owner was and how anal (read PITA) he was to work for.

I'm located in central North Carolina, and we get a fair amount of seasonable variance in relative humidity.  When the weather is nice, we have the window's open so the interior experiences its share of variation in humidity.

The house is a 2 story, with a full basement.

Some of the original flooring in the house is 2" wide, 3/4" thick T&G white oak.  There is not a gap to be seen anywhere in any of the white oak - the seams are incredibly tight and the floor doesn't squeak.

A few years ago we opted to install reclaimed heartwood pine flooring throughout the house, which necessitated our removing the oak flooring from the downstairs entryway and halls.  We kept some of the oak in place upstairs.

It had been installed as per the method that Handy Andy recommended, AND nailed.  Basically a thin bead of glue was put between the boards below the tongue, and some of this glue seeped downward and adhered the hardwood to the sub flooring in spots.

It took me and two helpers over two days to remove just a few hundred square feet of flooring!  

When we removed it, large chunks of the plywood sub floor came with it.  Part of the two days was spent in cleaning up the torn edges and filling in the voids.

I've seen a lot of wood floors, and installed several myself, and none have been tighter or remained more stable than the oak that was glued and nailed in my house.  It's solid, flat, stable, and doesn't squeak.

All things considered, from my personal experience nailing and gluing below the tongue will result in a stable floor with no cracks, but I wouldn't recommend it if you ever plan to replace the floor!  If I had it to do over again, we would have installed the heart pine the same way (we didn't glue it and it has some cracks).

Scott

[solidwoods]

I use Byrd carbide insert on a Weinig for t/g.
They come in 3 different amounts of play.
The inserts can be face sharpened 2 or 3 times but each time will make the fit a little more loose.
jim

[TexasTimbers]

crowder I do not like the Woodmaster for making t&g flooring. I love it for gang ripping and of course planing. I prefer a dedicated sander as well. I had a 50" Woodmaster drum sander before I experienced temporary insanity and sold it. I will get another one before too long.

I prefer the shaper for making t&g. I have around 20 sets of profiles for the Woodmaster most of them trim, base, crown etc. and have not used most of them. I ran a couple of the profiles one day just to see how I liked it for trim, and for making trim etc. I do like the Woodmaster. I made some ERC and other hardwood trim you just can't buy and will be making much more on occassion, so for the occassional use it's great. I would probably shop around if I was ever going to coinsider selling trim solely or as a significant source of business, but who knows maybe I would find I preferred the Woodmaster, it's just that I would want a trim machine that allowed for quicker knife changing if I was in the business.

Woodmaster offers a router attachment method for the planer to make any profile that you can get with router bits, but I told the sales rep it looked like to me a glorified way to use the planer as just a powerfeeder and asked him to give me the straight scoop on it. He did. I won't be ordering it.

Handy Andy I'd like to see a peek of your cuz's jig, although when I read your comment an image of what it probably looks like popped into my head.

Scott glad you made that post. It's hard to find a homeowner who has a glued floor with a long track record (good or bad) that also has the perspective only someone like us (you in this case) can bring. I have made queries about glued floors in this forum before and am always interested in the topic.

[footer]

All the Flooring I have seen has the bottom cut back farther than the top, so glue wouldn't even stick below the tongue.

[BBTom]

That would depend on the type of glue used, there is normally only about .030 gap just to make certain the top fits tight.