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narrowest hardwood flooring

Started by hackberry jake, July 11, 2014, 10:30:37 PM

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hackberry jake

What's the narrowest hardwood flooring you have seen? I was up at the local sawmill last week and saw they were edging the boards pretty heavy in order to not have wane on the edges of the boards. These edging strips varied in size but a lot of them had at least 2-3" of good board for at least four feet. I may see if he will seperate out the good edging strips and I will buy them at a little over slab price.
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Delawhere Jack

Parquet flooring (not seen much anymore) could be as narrow as 7/8 or 1". T&G strip flooring, I've seen some real cheap stuff that was maybe 1 1/2", and it was thin too, maybe 3/8" thick.

Delawhere Jack

Begs the question. You've got your own sawmill (and a kiln now too), why bother messing with scraps?

beenthere

My in-laws home had oak strip flooring that was 1" face in their 3-bedroom home in central IA.

Looked great, and as well, it was bacterially-infected red oak so had a lot of dark streaks in it.
I have a slide of that floor somewhere, but can't locate it.
south central Wisconsin
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hackberry jake

Quote from: Delawhere Jack on July 11, 2014, 10:56:15 PM
Begs the question. You've got your own sawmill (and a kiln now too), why bother messing with scraps?
if I bought a bundle of edging strips for $40 and there was 400 bf of usable wood in that bundle. That would be .10 a bf for oak. Thats quite a bit cheaper than I can buy the logs, and most of the work is already done for me (felling, bucking, skidding, hauling, cutting, stacking). I would just load them in the kiln and process them when they're done.
https://www.facebook.com/TripleTreeWoodworks

EZ Boardwalk Jr. With 20hp Honda, 25' of track, and homemade setworks. 32x18 sawshed. 24x40 insulated shop. 30hp kubota with fel. 1978 Massey ferguson 230.

Dave Shepard

About 2 1/4" is the narrowest I've seen.  A narrow board requires the same number of operations as a wide one to process.
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hackberry jake

Quote from: Dave Shepard on July 12, 2014, 10:20:00 AM
About 2 1/4" is the narrowest I've seen.  A narrow board requires the same number of operations as a wide one to process.
That's what I was thinking as well. At some point the law of diminishing returns will make it not worthwhile.
https://www.facebook.com/TripleTreeWoodworks

EZ Boardwalk Jr. With 20hp Honda, 25' of track, and homemade setworks. 32x18 sawshed. 24x40 insulated shop. 30hp kubota with fel. 1978 Massey ferguson 230.

beenthere

Try a bundle and see what does come out.. might get that silk purse... if nothing else, maybe some good stickers.

I'd expect there to be all kinds of twisting, and warping that would make recovery of some narrow flooring a nightmare.
But maybe there is some high value that can be recovered after stickering and drying, jointing an edge, and then ripping to width before running through shaper for the flooring tongue and groove pattern. Maybe...
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Gadrock

I am in the process as we speak with replacing a perfectly good wood floor with another. Why ? Well we had an infestation of larvae from a beehive in the fireplace and the travelling larvae were first diagnosed as power post beetle, so get that floor out immediately! Wrong answer for us. As we were destroying the non-repairable floor we got the answer. Oh yeah...the bug guy will not return any calls.

What is important for my friends is about the material I purchased from "the largest hardwood floor dealer". Things were going along quite well with the new flooring until I opened up one such box and all that was in the whole thing was short pieces. Oh yes they were as marked, with minimums in length but it was just about totally useless. We had to open up another box to get a few longer pieces out to help dilute that would be area of "nothing but short pieces".

We chose to use only one width in this project instead of using one narrow then one wide row. On  this part we may be lucky because we may have had additional boxes of super-short in wide and narrow all in one area of the room.

It was easier for us to choose the already finished wood for this project  with about 22 sq feet per box than getting a better quality wood with longer pieces and completing the finishing ourselves. Perhaps today the project will be completed. This ordeal is about 300 feet sq and about $1700 with us doing the work.

Please do not sell 18" pieces of hardwood t&g to your customers...if they are friends.

David G


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Clark

The house I grew up in had 1.5" wide quarter-sawn oak in the entire main floor. I've seen it other places too, I presume they were made in the same time period (20's?). Personally I think the narrower flooring looks better than the wider style which is popular right now but also realize the extra premium one should have to pay for it.

Clark
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Okrafarmer

I'm considering getting set up to mill flooring. I'd prefer for people to use the 3-4-5" widths, since they're easier to deal with, but to each his own.
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LittleJohn

Grandfather used to replace bowling alleys, back in the day; can you guess what the hardwood floor in the upper level of his house are ?? 

Old bowling alley boards, most have a face no more that 1.5"; and you want talk about think, I would guess a solid 2" or 2-1/2" maybe more

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