we are currently milling 3 inch ash planks for the floor of our barn but we are beginning to run out
of good logs to finish the job we are going to drive on this floor we have some white birch poplar
white pine and some hemlock could the white birch hold up or the poplar i live in the Adirondack region of
New York to give you an idea of our poplar type. Any advice you can give would be appreciated.
We also have some nice maples but would like to keep them to tap later in life thanks for the help
I know sometimes it has shake, but I have hemlock cut for my barn floor. I think it was often used for factory floors.
http://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-2/hemlock
I toured the old & vacant American Tobacco Co factories in the East End of Richmond Virginia in the 1980s. Immensely thick parquet floors made out of rock maple. Really, really impressive, thought amazingly (wastefully?) overbuilt.
This is an interesting thread. What about ground contact, insects, etc.? I am assuming this is not going on top of the slab of course? Maybe there's a basement of sorts underneath? 3 inch planks are pretty substantial.
I'd go to the wood handbook for something like that to get a sense of the relative strengths, these are not the allowable design values they are the properties of the clear wood itself, independent of grade and safety factors. I don't know which poplar you have, look it up in a tree guide.
Paper birch ;
Specific gravity .55
Modulus of rupture 12,300 psi
Modulus of elasticity 1.59
shear 600 psi
White ash
SG .60
MOR 15,000
E 1.74
Fv 1,910
White pine
SG .35
MOR 8,600
E 1.24
Fv 900
Eastern Hemlock
SG .40
MOR 8,900
E 1.2
Fv 1060
Red Maple
SG .54
MOR 13.400
E 1.64
Fv 1850
Sugar maple
SG .63
MOR 15,800
E 1.83
Fv 2330
The only wood that holds a candle to the ash is the maples, which is what baseball bat manufacturers figured too. I'd try to find some maple or more ash locally and borate the wood to frustrate the bugs.
Quote from: MbfVA on August 16, 2017, 03:42:12 PM
I toured the old & vacant American Tobacco Co factories in the East End of Richmond Virginia in the 1980s. Immensely thick parquet floors made out of rock maple. Really, really impressive, thought amazingly (wastefully?) overbuilt.
Those parquet floors were laid on 3x14 long leaf heart pine joists cut in George around 1900. My father was with American from 1937 until 1975. With a four year time-out to visit the Pacific in 1941. I still have a couple of those joists. But no parquet that I know of.
My wife's dad was a mechanical engineer for American in Durham from ~'67-'84. She said it was strange going into what are now shops and going through the door that was her Dad's office. When she went back to school at State we were poor young newlyweds (as opposed to poor oldieweds) she won a Phillip Morris scholarship... we never told him :D.
thanks for the replys the floor sits above a dug out basement with a cement floor i think if i look hard enough i can find some more
ash hate to cut those maples i do have some black cherry also but couldn't use that on a floor