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Putting down Hardwood

Here we are nailing wide plank beech flooring with an old fashioned T-Nailer. You need strong arms to use this unit all day.

This is a pneumatic stapler. You still trigger using the mallet, however it does some of the work for you and shoots a staple with excellent holding power. These two are working in tandem…one holds the board tight with a chisel (an old one), and the other fastens using the pneumatic nailer.

This floor is being put down over a good solid softwood floor… this makes an excellent base. Every board is glued down to prevent squeaks. IN the old days they would use a layer of building paper to prevent squeaks.

When you decide to install hardwood flooring the first consideration is whether the floor supporting it is strong enough. If there is movement when you walk on it you may want to add another layer of plywood (and glue the layers together), for strength.

Planning for full boards along obstructions is something that you will find only experienced carpenters like Nick Vanegmond doing.

You will always start with the straightest boards, and alternate the width. This floor has 3″, 5″ and 7″ boards. For the boards to remain tight you have to use the smaller boards to split the inconsistencies. End cuts all have to be trimmed off about 5-7″ for straight from the mill products like
these.

Every board is glued to prevent squeaks and for added strength and durability.

A cut off plank is used to bump the flooring into place. Trim off the tongue of the block leaving the groove face… this way you don’t cause splinters that will obstruct the flooring from laying flat.

Making Flooring in 2 Steps

Step 1, Plane the dried lumber. One person feeds, the other takes it out and stacks. That’s Chris feeding.

Step 2, the lumber is fed into the shaper. This is trick. I haven’t showed you the machine because Merv designed it and built it to work the way he likes it. This machine trues the wood (takes the crown out), trims it to width, then does the back cuts, shapes both sides and does all this in a single pass.

Out comes perfect flooring!

Did you ever wonder how wood absorbs moisture?Wood Flooring and Moisture

Plants draw moisture up the stem to the leaves. Wood from a tree is just a slice of the stem.
Wood cells can be as long as 2 1/2″ and they look like tubes. When the wood is alive they are full of moisture

Oak has rather wide cells and that give it a distinct grain. Mahogany is a similar shape of cell.

Sealing the end grains can prevent any wood from expanding and contracting quite so much and so quickly.

Many exterior builders seal the lumber all 6 sides.

The more wood flooring is dried, the harder it gets. When wood flooring is dried using heat the sap cooks. This cooked sap will not absorb moisture the same as air dried or partially dried floors, and it will actually deter the infiltration of moisture some species like pine.

This is why Merv dries his flooring to 6% rather than 8% moisture content.

Quite often floors are destroyed by moisture damage– It takes considerably more moisture to make 6% flooring swell than it does flooring dried less.