Thread: Milling for floor boards

Best cut quarter sawn so they're less susceptible to 'cupping' as they dry.

Cut 4x1s or 6x1s (as per your preference) and after drying they'll dress down to 19mm, which is 'structural' sound for laying directly onto bearers and joists.

If you don't machine them for tongue and groove you'll almost certainly end up with a draughty floor. ( A 'standard' 6"/150mm floorboard, after dressing and machining, provides about 130mm of floor coverage.)

Cracks and loose knots should NOT be included in the material you use. I'd suggest you dock it out.


All IMO of course. Helluva job you're taking on there. Good luck with it

what cat said,back sawn will eventually cup,the other thing i would do would be to mill the larger size timbers sooner, ie; window lintels,joists bearers so they have time to dry and shrink

Hi Redshirt,

Yes as the other respondents have said cut your boards on the quarter. Quarter sawn has about 50% of the movement across the board in response to moisture content changes as does backsawn. In Tassie its normal to cut to a green target thickness of 30mm to skip dress when dry to about 22mm and finish mould to 19mm. I wouldn't cut to these thickness dimensions for laying on yellow tongue. Its normal there to cut to overlay thickness of finished 12mm or even 10mm ie about 18mm green target thickness. The usual cover width is 109mm finished. I wouldn't recommend you attempt to prepare flooring with anything other than a tongue and groove fit on the edge. If you need to do everything yourself then you can form a good tongue and groove using a router and slot cutters having first removed 90% of the waste on a saw bench but it would be a hell of a lot of work. I've done it occasionally to match floor boards that had originally been prepared to non standard cover widths but that's only for a few boards.I suggest you rack your boards with a sticker spacing of 300mm and the racks to have flush ends ie set up with the so called push pull method. Never never use green rack sticks or you will get sticker stain on each sticker crossing that will probably go right through the baords.


Good luck

Old Pete




QUOTE=RedShirtGuy;1452549]Over the next couple of years I'll be making up and storing as much material as I can to build a bush cottage/house so that when I'm ready to build I'll have everything ready.

So with the cooler weather on the way, is there anything in particular I should know about milling for floor boards?

- For some reason I've got it in my head that they should be quarter-sawn but I'm not sure why. While the floor will be varnished (or simply oiled or waxed) when finished, I'm not after any particularly spectacular looking rays.
- Is there a guideline for thickness or other dimensions that I should be chasing?
- Does it make a difference if I'm going to be putting the boards straight to flooring joists or if there's yellow tongue chipboard down first? (I haven't yet decided if I'll go for a concrete slab foundation or have the house up on legs)
- Should I tongue and groove them? How about biscuits instead just to retain those few extra mm?
- How about the quality of the timber I'm using? Can cracks and knots etc be filled and hold up to foot traffic over the years?

Cheers[/QUOTE]

If you do go for a concrete slab you can still have a timber floor by screwing 50mm battens to it then laying your floorboards.
You'd have the best of both worlds - a great looking floor as well as one with lots of thermal mass ( depending on your windows and orientation of course ).

Stewie

Thanks folks

At the moment I'm only thinking of wooden floors for only a couple of areas (in a small house) but it's still going to be a hell of a job. I'm not even sure I'll be able to pull it off with the resources I have right now, but I'll be giving it a red hot go, and if it doesn't work out well enough, I'll still be able to use the timber for other unrelated projects.

I still need to put some research into cutting other lumber (I'd like exposed beams and posts in the main living areas and doorways) then sourcing the right trees for it. I'm hoping to use as much as I can from the property itself.

It's a long...long...term project that I'm only just starting to look at. The plan for the moment is to get the basic and essential parts of the house up and livable, then tweak it out properly and extend it from there over time. No doubt some bureaucrat will throw a spanner in that idea, but I'll see how it goes

Just back to the quarter-sawing for a sec...this is how I've been doing it in the past. Good enough?

The other thing you have with cutting floor boards on the qtr is you have the summer wood (dense) part of the growth rings are all standing up (as well as the early wood) ,with a flatsawn board there is a larger area of early wood interspersed with the summer wood, over time it can develop dips in the softer part, this is probably not a drama in our hardwoods but more of an issue with softwoods.

I have DAR about 2000lm of boards ready for toungue and groove or just for decking, it's a lot of work and depending on your setup how time effective it is, I had a reasonable system going which worked out ok in the finish, alternatively, find a mill that will machine your boards for you.


Pete

Originally Posted by RedShirtGuy

Just back to the quarter-sawing for a sec...this is how I've been doing it in the past. Good enough?

Yep, that's theoretical perfect for quartersawn timber.

I wouldn't suggest stress too much about adhering rigidly to that cutting pattern, though. The defining factor of quartersawn timber isn't that the log is cut into 'quarters' to work from. It's that the grain is perpendicular (or as close to it as possible) to the broad face of the board, rather than horizontal to the broad face.

It's called 'quartersawn' because back in the old days breaking the log down into quarters and then cutting it on a breast bench with a double sided gauge was the easiest way to achieve the desired outcome.

There are any number of ways you'll be able to cut your logs and still churn out quartersawn 4x1s and/or 6x1s. Depending on the size an condition of the logs you have available you might even be able to get quartersawn flooring from the outer portions and a beam or two (backsawn) from closer in toward the heart of the log. There'll doubtless be roof battens prourable from the 'offcut' sections, maybe some framing timber...


You'll work it out as you go. Just remember. Rather than adhering to a 'formula' it's best to have a good think about each log before you start cutting it, and figure out what you'd like to get from it and where that looks likely to be. Then be prepared, if you open it up and find that the quality isn't there, to change direction and cut somehing else from it instead!

Originally Posted by Catweazle

...

That's some good advice right there

sorry but red shirt guy, you've been fed a load of bs, go down the hardware or timber supplier and check out the orientation of the growth rings in the floorboards being sold

I understand what you're saying Sig, but not sure I agree.

My reckoning being that QS is more expensive to produce, therefore a higher retail price and consequently lower sales in a world where profit is king over quality (and little of the public really knowing and understanding the difference)

The quality, and structural qualities of itself, of QS is definitely better so, what reason would I have when making my own boards to straight rip them instead of QS? (Honest question, not argumentative)

Its not a cost saving issue as far as I see it, more so a functional issue of the usability of the timber in-situ....

Picture if you will fasteners in both pics - qs floorboards will split around fasteners and therefore ya floor over time ends up floating free. Floorboards are cut backsawn to provide holding of the fasteners

Also u try and sell QS boards to someone for decking/flooring (in this instance they aren not payin extra for how its sawn or the lower recovery you experience while cutting them, or even the extra handling you have had to encounter, they will pay around $800 per cubic metre for 4x1 done, simple) - they'll laugh in ya face, tell ya to bugger off and you'll be very lucky to get ya foot in the door again, cos they know u have no idea what ya doin.

Ah rightio. I see your point there.

But then isn't it a trade off between splitting in the QS (easily fixable aesthetically - maybe not so structurally) or cupping on the BS (requiring a full re-sand)?

Just cos it backsawn, doesn't mean it will cup, seen plenty of floors not cupped, seen plenty of timber backsawn that doesn't cup either. 99.99% of what I've cut for the past decade operating my business cutting timber, exclusively on a Lucas mill has been backsawn. Cupping occurs with differential moisture loss from a piece of timber usually caused by rapid moisture loss. If timber is looked after properly then no problem.

As an example I have a 2.4m long 750mm wide slab of qld bluegum sitting in my garage right now - it is cupped. I will turn it over tomorrow and through the course of the next week to ten days it will flatten and then cup the opposite direction. i will keep 'looking after' this slab until this movement slows down and stops, then I will use it for a dining table.

Floorboards are so cheap to buy at auction by the pack with a huge range of species and pack sizes. I think the whole question of quartersawn, backsawn etc. is redundant. Flooring is kiln dried and then milled to precise tolerances. Then you nail it down and then you sand it flat and seal it. You might get a bit of cupping if it goes under water in a flood but other than that modern endmatched t&g is just about bullet proof. Besides the grain and colour show better with backsawn. You would be much better off using your mill to cut bigger section timbers. To even get close to commercial flooring you are going to need $100K worth of milling equipment.