Thread: Working with Jarrah Floorboards - help and advice

I use Titebond3 for cutting/cheese boards and personally, I would just clamp all the boards together and not worry about a frame.

The finish I use is our benevolent dictators cutting board oil. Check out the sites link for his products. That stated a lot of woodies use paraffin oil, olive oil, macadamia oil etc (this is a contentious subject for some).

Maybe turn the nail holes into a feature. Possibly make them bigger and epoxy some new and shiny dollar coins into them? Just a thought.

Jarrah floorboards are just fine.

Titebond3 is plenty good. Some might suggest epoxy, but I personally think its overkill.

On moisture, you are overthinking it. As long as the board isnt left in the sink or put in the dishwasher it will be fine.

For finish, my preference, always, has been simple mineral oil. There is much discussion on the subject here, but there are many camps and none are wrong - its mostly preference. I choose mineral oil as its absolutely inert, utterly food safe, easy to apply/reapply and doesnt cause concern for contamination (nothing can live in it).

Gaps in boards are obviously bad. Want to avoid them as much as possible, so making up dowels of one board, drilling the nailholes out (completely - leave no crud) and jamming a tapered dowel in with a good bit of glue is best. Hammer those bastards in well!

For the high school project, I think boards are a very basic project. Make a few to practice, but something a bit more ambitious would be better.

Depending on the age of your son, can I suggest - minecraft chest, dice rolling tower, a DM screen, playing card storage box, carved wands, treasure chests, or a storage vessel of some kind (box/chest) for his hobby of choice....

Thank you for your suggestions. Will definitely follow those advices. Nail holes, maybe mix some of the Titebond3 with the sawdust and pack it with that? or like you say, epoxy the holes as a feature.
He is only 14 and like his father (me) will struggle with many of those projects.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

For the high school project, I think boards are a very basic project. Make a few to practice, but something a bit more ambitious would be better.

Depending on the age of your son, can I suggest - minecraft chest, dice rolling tower, a DM screen, playing card storage box, carved wands, treasure chests, or a storage vessel of some kind (box/chest) for his hobby of choice....

A bit off topic. I'm not disagreeing with you, cutting/serving boards are quite basic as a project but I actually do them as the first project with my Yr10 students. I use it to learn Fusion 360, introducing a few different types of timber, working within limitations, machine safety and going through the basic use of a CNC router. We also have a cheese tasting session when they're done. It's a quick and simple project that we can pull many different skills and knowledge from.


On topic - Titebond 2/3 works fine. Are you planning on ripping the tongue and groove off and gluing that edge? Might be a bit thin for such a big board? It might be worth ripping to maybe 30mm widths and gluing up 15-20 strips to get some thickness in the finished board.

Year 10 serving boards.jpg

Thank you for your feedback Lewisc.
I am looking at keeping the tongue and groove in to join the wood together. And maybe adding a small amount of the Titebond. I will sand back the outer edge of the tongue and the groove to make it square.
To make it a little more practical (the all mighty) wife has asked for some handles at each end as well as to have it raised a little, so a small frame/feet might be on the cards as well.

I intend to also clean both sides of the planks to a smooth clean finish. Being relatively small in length (700mm x 340mm), I will probably encourage him to use elbow grease rather than a sander to get the finish.
Now, the bottom and edges I may seal rather than oil as they won't be in contact with food and won't be seen.


The wood is quite thick (at 18mm) and when I combine 4 of them together it has a bit of weight behind it, so by keeping the T&G will help with stability and strength. When I joined them up they actually sit quite flush with little gap.
Unfortunately the wood has not been worked on since it was laid (?? back 70 odd years ago), so it may need a bit of elbow grease to get a good smooth finish.


This sort of work is not my trade (Actually work in a lab - so have no real experience with tools needed to do this properly), and most of what I/we will need will have to be beg, borrow and hire. But as my son is doing it for a school project (there will be another project I will post up later) I want to teach him all about correct planning, researching and then writing down a step wise plan before just jumping in. I believe school is expecting the same.

I must say that this is not a woodwork/metal work project the kids need to do, they can pretty much do anything (one kid is actually building a computer from scrath - by purchasing all the components and putting it all together.)


I do show him these discussions and talk to him about how people on here know a lot and for him to take notes as to what they (you) say.


Thanks again
Nic

T&G isn't really intended to "hold the wood together" with any force. If you think what forces a typical floor is exposed to, and then think about a tray that will get taken in and out of cupboards, will carry food and other items around the house, and will be subject to the usual misadventures, I'd suggest you'll be back here in a few months looking for alternate suggestions

T&G is intended to keep the top surface, where a person would walk, in a flat plane so that you don't kick your toe and don't get splinters from when boards flex and if edges were to rip off. From my experience, they're also not a perfect fit designed for strong mechanical bonds. If you rely on that for your tray, it might hold, but it's not really the same forces that T&G is designed to resist.

I love the idea of reusing this timber - it's perfect for what you want. I would just tend to over-engineer this a bit more than you have.

So having said all that, I would approach this by testing my hypothesis....

Build one the way you think you said - use the 18mm thickness as your "thick" dimension and glue as you were initially thinking. But at the same time build one like @lewisc suggested that has your 18mm boards ripped into strips so that the top/bottom faces of each board are the glue joins and are more than 25mm wide (choose a width based on what the actual width of your boards are, after tongue and groove are removed, and you allow for the thickness of the ripping cut removes the material). Then see which one lasts longer.

Since you say you have minimal equipment, you might need to find a way to have someone do the table saw work on resawing your boards. (I almost hate suggesting this) Even a cheapish Ozito "table saw" from the BGS might work enough to do what you need, so check gumtree as they are often listed 2nd hand there not long after people do their first/only project with it and just want to get some cash back... There may also be a mens shed in your area, or a forum-friend who can do this... however given the current state of restrictions, that may take a bit of time to be feasible.

good luck on this. Must do a similar thing myself, in fact have some 18mm Tas Oak in the garage for this.

In T&G floorboards to ensure that you have a tight join on the top there is often a slight clearance on the bottom rebate. This may result in the boards bowing up quite badly as you clamp them.

Do a dry clamping to see if this is a problem. If it is you will have to remove the T&G and joint the boards.

Thanks Poundy,
All good and valid points.

I do have two men's sheds around the area so I will explore that too.

I was going to post something in the men's shed forum as well.

You say about the sheer forces. I intend to have on the base a frame to also screw/glue the boards in place.

But all helpful.

Thanks
N

This is the perfect job to start out with a few good hand tools.

A Japanese pull saw, hand plane, sander and a bit of glue.

Joint all the boards with the plane.... glue and plane/sand to get flat. I personally think that taking the T+G's off is the right choice.

Good sweat inducing work for the cold winter approaching.



On tools - there are some outstanding deals on Gumtree and eBay for planes. Some really excellent old Stanleys, Records and others there. A thousand times better than anything one would acquire from a hardware store.... plus a better price too.

Sanders too - Gumtree has them all the time, plus a fair few Pawn shops sell their wares on eBay after their withholding periods. Some decent things there.

If I may offer one note - edge glued timber is fantastically strong. The timber will break before the glue. Leaving the T+G's on will just make it hard to align everything, plus leave gaps for grime to accumulate, plus it will have all the grime of the original boards - just plane them off!

I agree with WP, unless you get a near zero gap alignment with the boards I would also remove the T&Gs.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

....
If I may offer one note - edge glued timber is fantastically strong. The timber will break before the glue. Leaving the T+G's on will just make it hard to align everything, plus leave gaps for grime to accumulate, plus it will have all the grime of the original boards - just plane them off!

Originally Posted by BobL

I agree with WP, unless you get a near zero gap alignment with the boards I would also remove the T&Gs.

The groove in T&G is actually a little deeper than the tongue to allow somewhere for the glue to go if glued. As WP says this will leave an unsitely gap at each end. Three possible solutions:

• Plane of both the tongues and the grooves as WP suggests, and then butt join, or
• Glue up as is, then drill into the gaps and insert a plug, or
• Carefully plane the faces beside the groove until the tongue just bottoms, then glue up.

I think the latter is the best, but it does require slightly better planing skills.

I use a lot of salvaged timber, Nic, and often have to hide or work around problems in the timber such as nail and screw holes, splits and worse. One of the best techniques is to convert a nail hole into a design feature such as:

• drill out the nail hole using a forstner bit (It drills cleaner than twist bits),
• using a plug cutter, make some plugs from a scrap piece of the same timber,
• glue the plug into the forstner hole aligning grain patterns, as far as possible,
• plane or sand smooth
• if one plug does not fully hide the defect, insert a series of plugs as appropriate.

Here is an example; in use in a hearth surround for almost ten years.

Hearth Surround.jpg

More to what Graeme says, one could acquire one of THESE MASTERPIECES! --> Record 405 multiplane

Duuuudddeeeee, that would get your woodworking teacher super excited!

They go for about 200

record 405 pic 5.jpg record 405 pic 2.jpg record 405 pic 3.jpg record 405 pic 4.jpg record 405 pic 1.jpg

Originally Posted by NicA

You say about the sheer forces. I intend to have on the base a frame to also screw/glue the boards in place.

I did some experimenting last year on rub joints (an edge joint without clamps). You may be interested in just how much sheer loading an unadorned long grain joint can support.

Gluing without clamps – The rub joint – Lance's Workbench