Thread: Salvaging useable timber from old joists

Paul, my nail puller looks pretty much the same as yours, but there is no makers id on the handle. Mine has a goose neck because it prefers to bend rather than pull nails out.

Carbatec are out of stock of nail cutting blades and there's at least a months wait for new stock.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Paul, my nail puller looks pretty much the same as yours, but there is no makers id on the handle. Mine has a goose neck because it prefers to bend rather than pull nails out.

Carbatec are out of stock of nail cutting blades and there's at least a months wait for new stock.

Carbatec seem to be at least a month away from getting anything worth having these days!

After a brief intermission...

I received the CMT contractors blade two weeks ago. This week I have used it to dimension a few of the old joists.

It was too hard to work on the rotted faces of the joists so I decided to just sacrifice the contractors blade and rough dimension a number of salvageable joists. The contractor blade is not bullet proof. With a low tooth count it actually rips quite well, but I have managed to shatter a few teeth. I'm not overly concerned as I figure at $35 it is worth the cost to finish up with 30+ metres of useable timber.

I got all the nails out before cutting, but couldn't budge the screws. The screws held down compressed cement sheeting and were chipboard style screws. These are high tensile and designed to resist withdrawing. I'm guessing the high tensile issue helps account for the shattered carbide teeth.

Anyway, having dimensioned the joists it was somewhat easier to work on the removal of the remaining screw stubs. The remaining embedded lengths ranged from about 1cm to 4cm. I eventually got them all out except one, by drilling down beside the screws on 3 sides and using a nail punch to jiggle the screws around until the grip broke and I could get enough purchase with side cutters to unscrew. Bruised hand tonight though!


I think I now have enough material for a new benchtopl At the moment I think I'll just reuse my existing bench legs. Next job is to further clean up these cut down joists to the point of being able to laminate them.

With screws I have done as you describe, I also chisel out around the screw enough to get a grip with the vice grips and then turn to extract, has worked quite well, vice grips, another fine invention!



Pete

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Even after cutting away 20 mm of the rot the shanks are still half rust. I wonder if using a plug cutter might be an option? Run the plug cutter around the nail/screw, then break away the wood to get a better hold on the shank. There are no nail heads to start on, they all rusted away decades ago. Any attack has to be with some sort of pincer, claws pulling on nailheads are not an option.

Good Morning Fuzzie

I like using salvaged timber and routinely use your plug cutter idea. The plug must be large enough to allow pinchers , quickgrip, or other tool to properly grip the now exposed shank. One the nail or screw is removed immediately glue in a plug - best to align the grain.

Also I use a sacrificial circular saw blade and a sacrificial set of thicknesser blades until I am sure that salvaged wood is free of hidden metal. Remember, the grit on old timber is almost as hard on blades as nails.

Fair Winds

Graeme

It was those damn chipboard screws that did all the damage, I think the contractor blade would eat nails no problem. Not only are the screws hard and grip well, but these ones were rusted in and would just snap somewhere inconvenient unless they were relieved to their full depth on three sides by drill holes.

I was aiming for enough timber for a 600x1800 benchtop. By the time I straightened the twists and took out the cups in the old joists I was left with barely enough to glue up to 600 wide. I raided the salvage heap again and found another joist I could cut a decent 1800 length from and trimmed that up as well.

I now need to decide what exact thickness to aim for before squaring up the joists ready for glue up.

Really at this stage I have to make a firm decision on what exact style of bench this is going to be. That would be the start of a workbench WIP thread.

While trying to squeeze some suitable wood for bench legs out of the stack of rotten beams I came across a new problem.

I have denailed some of the old beams by gouging, drilling and digging nails out and gone over them with a metal detector to make sure I hadn't missed any. Having recently retired the nail cutting blade I had installed a good blade in the table saw and was ripping one of the beams when a few sparks shot out. On inspection there was still an embedded but completely rusted nail in the timber. I dug out as much of the rusty bits as I could and went over it with the metal detector... it did not register. I guess the rust is relatively soft, but it goes to show there is always a surprise around the corner. Rust may not be magnetic but it still sparks!

How did the blade put up after the cut?

No apparent damage to the blade teeth. The rust was pretty crumbly stuff. Here's a pic of the cleaned up beam pieces cut to leg blank sizes.

legs.jpg

I've now got to commit to a bench design before I can go any further. I have a couple of odd bench screws and vices which I'm trying to fit into a design (e.g. the old Joplin quick release on the floor behind the paint tin). I'm probably going for a bench of the dimensions of the Schwarz Holtzapffel design but with a vice configuration more like the Fortune/Nelson one in the Workbench book.

1951 ... Less wasteful society, maybe.

1951 Wynn-Timmons.jpg 1951 Wynn-Timmons A.jpg

(Other than 1000s and 1000s dead in war, of course)

No wonder my nail puller self destructed. Clearly it was designed to pull newish flat head nails out of clean fruit crates not rusted in stubs out of gnarly old fence posts.