Wide board flooring for a unheated cabin cottage/ retirement house.

[abnorm]

Hi all I am building a retirement home in Tn on the lake lots of woods to play with. 

I have one of the Hudson’s 28 band saws (not the 228) with 32' track  (2x6' 1x12' 1x8' extensions)
dogs etc 4-ton crane mounded on a flatbed Chevy to move the logs with.

I have a 32' slab for the saw in Tn and have built a 24' tow able trailer with a 3500lb torsion Axle here in Pa.

heree are my questions

a.  Should I cut my flooring to completely cover the length of the floor (max 24' long) I have enough red oak around the house to cut prime plus boards one piece and do have the equipment to make the flooring at that length. ( T&G)  will cut 5q boards and mill to 4 q finish stock should be 5 - 6 inches wide but may try mix width board just for the fun of it

I am worried that without heat the floor will buckle, shrink, and expand too much. I have been able to get the MC. to 11% in my garage and with the addition of a dehumidifier and fans been able to get it around 8 9 % with a little work

Any body else build a wide board floor

My thoughts are if I glue and screw (on the tongue) the boards down from the top and then go under the floor in the garage and screw into the boards from the bottom it will hold them down.

I will install a heat pump but since it is not used most of the year will not run much till I move

any help out there with this would be apprciated.

thanks in advance
Randy
 

[logwalker]

Welcome to the forum. Good luck with the floor. You have a lot of variables to deal with on that floor. How rustic can you live with on the final result? Joe

[solidwoods]

Howdy welcome
I'm in Fentress Co.
If the bldg. will be climate controlled then just make the flooring mc like any other (6-8%).
I have a kiln/molder if you need one.

If you wish to dry your own wood, then when the wood is fully air dried (about 15%mc) put the wood in the same environmental conditions that it will be in for 1 yr per inch thickness prior to machining it (that's why kilns are a good buy).

Length of the rips can be anything you like.

Widths are your choice but woodworker beware, wider boards can show their movement more.

If you can qtr. saw that is in your favor.

Proper and Uniform mc is very very important.

Thickness.
I make flooring by using 1 and 1/8" increments on the mill scale.  That scale is easy to work ,, I say it in improper fractions and its easy to remember-   1-1/8,  2-2/8,  3-3/8, 4-4,  5-5,  6-6, 7-7, 8-8, 10-1,  11-2,  12-3, etc.
I open a face, turn 90deg, open 2nd face, turn 90deg get on the scale, turn 90deg get on the scale, box the heart till (your choice here) 5-5 or 4-4 then through saw the cant.  You can still cut off the best faces (cut for grade),, you won't get off my many boards.

Nail the tongue with a Porta Nailer and barbed nails.
You can't glue t/g flooring, you can't screw it from below or it will crack as it seasonally moves.
jim
931.879.6490

[TreeBones]

Hi, The reason you don't see wide long floor boards is they are prone to warpage and movement. It can be done but be prepared to have some boards go south and have squeaks and uneven surfaces. The wider and longer boards you have the more problems you will run into in the long run. Do you like rustic?

[bama20a]

I sure don't know much about wood,But I'm reading & trying to learn,So please don't take this wrong,But from what I've been told is you can't get wood MC down to 11% as you stated without a kiln,What type of meter do you have to check it with? As I stated I'm learning .So the other fellow that told me that could be wrong ;DThank You Mark,,,,

[Tom]

Abnorm and bama20a

There are not nearly the mysteries associated with wide wood flooring that the public has in mind.  Wide boards do cup and warp, as do narrow boards.  It's just that the narrow boards are cupping within a range that most folks ignore.  So, realizing that there will be 99 people who will tell you that you can't do something to the one person who says that you might be able to, most any want is worth a try.  Solidwoods has the right idea about the thickness.  Wide board use is no time to be messing around with thin stock.  Quarter Sawing (vertical grain) is also in your favor if the straight-line image is something that you can live with.  Wide board, many times, use the entire width of the tree.  When that happens, the center is flat-sawed and will cup appropriately.  That is when carpentry skills, like running kerfs down the back of the board with a circle saw, will help to make the board lay flat.  Surface nailing and gluing the wide boards to a stable sub-floor is also a means of holding them down.

Even perfectly formed vertical grained boards will have their challenges.  They will crook.  That means that the heart side of the board will crown and the bark side will be concave, so there is no panacea and working with wood still becomes an effort, regardless of what you do.

There is a thread on here about a Satilla Lodge that has 20 inch SYP boards in its floor.   I cut them and a bunch of Yayhoos that worked for the doctor who built it, layed them.  They were never told that they couldn't make it work so they did it anyway.  It's beautiful. 

It has butted seams and the cracks did open some, but the realization that the cracks would grout themselves with oils and dust from living in the house has caused them no grief. As a matter of fact, the openings, now filled, look pretty good.

If the room you are going to floor will not be artificially heated or cooled,  The air dried boards that reflect the ambiant MC in the room is not only sufficient, but desired.   Even kilned wood works best when it allowed to acclimate to the environment in which it will live.

[TreeBones]

I sure don't know much about wood,But I'm reading & trying to learn,So please don't take this wrong,But from what I've been told is you can't get wood MC down to 11% as you stated without a kiln,What type of meter do you have to check it with? As I stated I'm learning .So the other fellow that told me that could be wrong ;DThank You Mark,,,,

Just a note. Where I live the MC will drop below 7% from air drying, other areas it may never get below 15% to 20%. Check with other professionals in your area to see what methods they use.

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

As Tom mentions, quarter saw and cut thicker for use of wider boards.
You can cut full length, but the bow will
be up to several inches in 24 ft.  However, you could chop them and keep
each group together: 4', 6', 8', etc.  When you lay the floor, you would have grain
that matches all the way down the run.  On the other hand, you won't
be able to have that, "ooh, look how long those boards are."

If that 24'-long-board "OOOh" factor is important, go with thick flat-sawn.

Very good advice from everyone.

[Tom]

Where I live the MC will drop below 7% from air drying

,


Where might that be?

[TreeBones]

Tom:
 I live in Twain Harte, Ca. the High Sierras. My moisture meter only goes down to 7% and during the summer MC drops below this with all the local species I cut here. I need to be careful that I do not make items that have tight clean joints and send them to the coast or they swell up something fierce.

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

We have a guy on the FF from the Middle East (?Katar?) next to a desert area,
who also has mentioned being able to get down that low.


Went and checked: it is alsayyed from Qatar.

[bandmiller2]

Randy like logwalker says it depends on how rustic you want to get if you don't mind that barn floor look have at it make the boards planks less movement.If you want a finer floor I would rip to standard widths and random legnth.What I did was to break the top edge of the board with a electric hand plane all around that makes a pleasing groove all around,and the cracks between the boards don't show.I screwed and pluged the floor with darker plugs looks nice.Frank C.

[abnorm]

HI Thanks for all the info

have a good moisture meter.

Poor man that i am i cannot afford a kiln, I use my garage 3 bays and use a comerical dehumidifier, humidifier, fans and ventilation to get it down to 8% take about 6 months for white oak and 6 weeks or so for Yellow Poplar depending on the time of year. when i get it down I drench the boards to help relieve drying stresses and get it down again just prior to milling


Would like to here from more people that have used wide board flooring, looking for hints and tricks

Nice wide 22 Pine floor on one of the links will not be going that wide as i said before 5 - 6"

Leaving for Tn tommorow Truck and Trailer all packed up to do some felling and slicing and dicing, need some more Yellow Poplar and red oak for some trim work.


So will not see these comments for a couple of weeks.

Randy

[woodmills1]

I did three rooms of maple in my old house, from 4 to 10 inch wide.  Cut, then air dried for a year.  Planed to 7/8 then well stickered inside for 6 months.  Then finish planed, tounge and grovved and back cut then stickered in rooms to be installed for another 3 months. It would show larger gaps during winter with forced hot air heat(not obnoxious gaps just more than summer) but no lumps or buckling.  I used a hand flooring tounge nailer and a face nailer that used the same T nails.

side story

we had an auto tree waterer for the christmas tree that used a siphon from a gallon jug to water the tree.  One of our cats pulled the hose out and the whole gallon leaked onto the maple floor right over the main trunk duct for the hot air heat, and still no warp.

I did another floor in that house the same way but used 3 to 5 inch strips and they were stickered in the house for 2 years.  That floor didn't seem to move at all, looked better than many custom installlations and it was in the kitchen.

We are headed to Niagara Falls for a bit so will talk next week.

[DanG]

Welcome to the forum, Abnorm and you other new guys.  This has started a good discussion on some of the challenges in making a good floor.

If I understand correctly, the cabin will not be climate controlled at first, then will always be climate controlled later.  That is going to be a big factor in the final appearance of the floor, imho.  It is going to move more in those first years, but once you move in full-time the environment will stabilize on the low end of the expansion/contraction scale.  I think you're going to have cracks between the boards then.  The wider the boards, the wider the cracks will be.  If you want a rustic look, go for the wide boards, but if it is a slick, formal look you're after, skinny boards are the only way to do it with the conditions you're facing.

[WDH]

I did another floor in that house the same way but used 3 to 5 inch strips and they were stickered in the house for 2 years. 

I wish that my wife would let me sticker lumber in my house for two years .

[srt]

This is a good discussion, and I'd have to agree with what's been said.    I'd love to see a floor made of full length wide thick quartersawn boards from your own woods.  

I imagine you will come to peace with accepting the gaps that are going to appear.  I think they're a small price to pay for such a special floor.

The thing I'm wondering about is how you're going to machine the boards.  I've made a few floors starting from rough sawn boards, and I actually find the difficult part is making long straight boards that are the exact same width.  If you're going full room length with your boards, then obviously they don't all have to be the same width.  However, they still need to be very, very straight.  Trying to bend a 12" wide board straight while laying it doesn't work very well.   Trying to run a crooked board through a shaper to t/g it doesn't work very well either.  In our shop, we would fuss for a real long time with two guys trying to straighten a 24' long board on an 8" jointer.  Then, we'd have to t/g it real quick before it moved!  

If you do have the big equipment, more power to you.  If not, and the jointer isin't getting them straight enough for you, you might try roughing them out on your mill, and then clamping them to a 24 foot long plywood jig and pattern routing the minimum amount to get them straight.  Pretty slow, but should work.

I strongly recommend you do not glue the tongue into the groove.  The problem here happens when the glue joint holds but the wood on the board can't withstand the shrinkage and it splits the board somewhere in the middle.  My dad put up a shiplap ceiling in the 70's that did just that.  It's kinda like what they say about metal - it never breaks at a good weld, but next to it.  The jury's still out on whether or not you can stop the shrinkage with glues and screws into the floor joists.  I don't think it hurts, but might help.  

Something that I think would help would be to put a finish on the underside of the boards.  That way both sides of the board would have a similar resistance to sucking up and giving off humidity, which is why they grow, shrink and cup in the first place.  If there's good access below, you could even apply it  using  a tight nap roller after the floor is laid.  You're not necessarilly trying to get a perfect seal, just trying to get a reasonable coat on it to limit the moisture exchange.  It won't stop movement, just limit it.  

Hope it helps.  Use what you want, toss the rest.

[woodmills1]

WDH   yes my wife is very forgiving and not afraid of dirt also

that floor was stickered behind the couch for about a year and all she said one day was...........riddle me this  "I just cleaned the kitchen floor and I wasnt even in the kitchen" 

Then about a year later as she was leaving for a trip to disney with some girl friends she said "do you think the kitchen floor csn go home"  I put it down the next day.



back to the flooring
I use the woodmizer to straighten boards all the time.  Makes it much easier on the jointer.

[Don P]

I've popped a line, skill saw, then tablesaw oppesite edge with a long fence then flip come in 1/4" and resaw my skillsawn edge then t&g with a handheld router with a fence. I'd go for it if it were mine to do. I've finally been told no more wood in da house 

[adrean louis]

hi guys, i also find that a hand held jointer works great and then just clamp several boards  to a horse or something