Just having my morning coffee and was pondering what it would take to make some flooring.
What type machine would be needed?
Is it worth the investment?
What all is involved?
I have access to plenty of lumber .
I make flooring with a series of shapers following a jointer and planer. I would have a 5-6 head moulder but lack the power in my shop.Flooring is a price point racket that you need to be very efficient at to make a go of it. Rob
I've made flooring by planing, using a shaper with a jointer cutter head, a table saw to rip to width, and a shaper to cut the tongue and groove. Any volume requires thinking through operations to make the process efficient.
I made large carts to make moving lumber stacks easier
Hardest thing to define here is "some flooring". Enough for your house? Supply a contractor or two? Attempt to set the flooring world afire? ;D
Logosol and Baker make some nice small moulders with reasonable power consumption. $15k ish new. $8-10k used.
Big old 4 head moulders can be picked up pretty cheap if you can move one. Bought this because it runs off a single shaft I can power with my tractor. Weighs 8000 lbs. Paid scrap price for it and hand winched it on a rented trailer. :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/44195/moulder_on_trailer.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1498661084)
I plan to run flooring and cedar tounge and groove once I go through the machine.
There are "newer" old machines out there (Mattison etc.) that can be had almost as cheap. Yes they usually have multiple electric motors, but can be run off a generator. There was a pretty nice Vonnegut on Epay a month ago that finally sold for $2500 with several drawers full of profile knives.
The Sawmill Exchange currently has 23 moulders listed starting at $1200. (See links to left and at bottom of this page.)
Then there's always the table saw, planer, jointer, shaper/router method mentioned above. And if you have lots of time, and enjoy body building, there is always the old school methods such as the Stanley No. 50 moulding plane.
Google Spring green timber growers. They have some interesting information on how they make T&G flooring.
I'll second Timbergreen.
http://www.timbergreenforestry.com/Making%20Flooring.html (http://www.timbergreenforestry.com/Making%20Flooring.html)
Here is a discussion from OWWM about actually making 750 SF of flooring with shaper, jointer, planer, and basic saws. But you have to be logged in to OWWM to see it unfortunately.
http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?t=184792 (http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?t=184792)
Quote from: TKehl on August 31, 2017, 06:50:36 PM
I'll second Timbergreen.
Here is a discussion from OWWM about actually making 750 SF of flooring with shaper, jointer, planer, and basic saws.
http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?t=184792 (http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?t=184792)
Followed the link and got:
"The board requires you to be registered and logged in to view this forum."
Me too !
My bad. :( Forgot that part of the site isn't fully public. :embarassed: Added a Timbergreen link as partial concession. ;D
To sum it up, there was a lot (a lot) of material handling compounded by the fact that the boards were extra wavy. In the end, the flooring was nice.
The guy that made it went ahead and bought a used Woodmaster after the first batch.