Wood flooring length.

Joe Hillmann · January 12, 2024, 12:36:13 PM

I am planning to start making random width, pine, tongue and groove flooring for my house. Most of it is 8'6", some is longer up to about 16 feet.

Originally I was thinking of making the flooring the full length of the boards. But now that I am actually thinking through the individual steps and the tools I i will be using I am thinking it would be easier to cut them in half so they are 4 foot sticks of flooring(some would be even shorter to avoid bad knots and defects).

But since I haven't started yet I wonder if there is a reason not to cut them shorter?

If it matters, the floor will be laid over a board sub floor laid at a angle.

Magicman · January 12, 2024, 01:36:39 PM

The only flooring that I have ever had made was cut to various lengths to maximize the quality.

Random length Ash flooring.

.
Brought inside before installing.

NE Woodburner · January 12, 2024, 01:49:48 PM

Personally, I like the look of random joints in flooring.

Stephen1 · January 12, 2024, 02:21:36 PM

I did all cherry in 12' lengths. When we laid it, some got cut down to make sure the joints were not all in the same place. We had to cut out some defects. Different or shorter lengths is definitly easier to handle. all about personal preference.

Don P · January 12, 2024, 04:05:19 PM

Pine is the only one I can think of that comes in full length boards, i can't remember ever seeing it random length. Not that it matters, I see nothing wrong with it either way.

peakbagger · January 12, 2024, 04:52:43 PM

There used to be Ethan Allen sawmill/component shop near me, they set aside odd sizes and ends aside and when things got slow the made hardwood flooring, 3" wide by 1 foot long T&G on the long sides straight on the ends. It was $1 a finished board foot. I missed out on black walnut (the employees grabbed it) but did get oak and ash.
I made my living room floor out of it. I have a herring bone pattern around the edges and staggered the joints. It took a long time to install and a PITA to sand as the grain goes in all directions but the end result came out great. I think the key is make all the boards exactly the same length as tolerances will build up.

beenthere · January 12, 2024, 05:44:22 PM

For sure random lengths more-so than random widths. Random widths can be frustrating if also random lengths (best utilization with rl).

Magicman · January 12, 2024, 07:01:22 PM

I used both random lengths and widths with the Pine flooring in the Cabin Addition:

6", 8", 10", 12", & 14", but I do not have a good picture of it.

Joe Hillmann · January 16, 2024, 10:32:16 AM

Quote from: Magicman on January 12, 2024, 07:01:22 PM
I used both random lengths and widths with the Pine flooring in the Cabin Addition:

6", 8", 10", 12", & 14", but I do not have a good picture of it.

After reading everyone responses I plan to cut most of my boards at 4 foot or at defects to make processing easier.

I am still going to go random width.

Magicman, how did you fasten your wide boards? Did you just nail them through the face? I was planning on my widest being 6 inches to minimize bowing and movement in wider boards.

Magicman · January 16, 2024, 11:29:38 AM

All of my flooring, both the Ash and the Pine is surface nailed with 15 gauge nails. I set the air pressure on my nailer so that the heads are below the surface. I did not fill the nail holes. I shot the nails at an angle to gain as much grip as possible. Musta worked because I have not had any issues. The nails are random with no pattern anywhere.

The Whitewashed walls were installed the same way except the nail holes were spackled.

Joe Hillmann · January 16, 2024, 02:57:38 PM

@Magicman

Are those wide boards tongue and groove?

Magicman · January 16, 2024, 03:01:46 PM

Yes, everything is T&G.

firefighter ontheside · January 16, 2024, 04:15:13 PM

I think it looks better with random length so that you don't start to create a pattern. I made 2", 3" and 4" thick boards and random lengths. It's a little tricky to lay it so that the widths appeared random. My longest boards were about 6' and shortest about 2'.

Joe Hillmann · January 16, 2024, 07:40:59 PM

Until now I wasn't concerned about the widths appearing to be random, thanks for giving me another thing to worry about.

My floor wont have as much color as yours but it will be made of 5 or 6 different types of pine, spruce, and tamarack so it may start making very obvious patterns that I may not want if I don't watch out for it.

firefighter ontheside · January 16, 2024, 08:19:22 PM

I think a recurring pattern of length might be more noticeable than not getting the random width thing just right. My first floor is cypress 2 1/2" wide flooring. I got it all in long lengths, but with cutting out knots as we installed it, it was very rare that we installed anything longer than 8'. I know of a spot in the house where there are three pieces installed that were obviously part of a longer board at one time and then had knots cut out.

Larry · January 16, 2024, 09:35:29 PM

My flooring experience. 30 years ago I had a house built and called for the best grade of oak flooring. Nothing but the best, right? No knots, stain, bug holes, and nice long sticks. The most boring floor I've ever had, hated it.

12 years ago I built another house and called for #2 flooring. It had knots, mineral stain, bug holes, flat sawn, quarter sawn, and some short boards down to about a foot. I love the floor and get lots of compliments.

I've also made small lots of custom flooring a few times. The wood with character is always the winner.

FFOTS floor is a great example of a interesting floor.

Magicman · January 16, 2024, 09:48:15 PM

My Ash flooring is different widths and also contains knots, pith, and whatever else that happened to show up. It is shown here raw before staining, etc.

scsmith42 · January 17, 2024, 09:34:15 AM

Looks like I'm in a different camp than everybody else (not the first time!), as I much prefer longer strips of flooring. I have some 18' stuff in the works right now, matter of fact.

To me, longer strips make a much more elegant floor. I personally am not a big fan of significant color variances in a floor. Some of the older homes in NC that had 16' - 20' strips of clear quarter / rift oak or pine just have a really nice ambience in the rooms.

We've done a lot of 16' strips for customers using their logs, and it's turned out well. Here are a couple of pix.

This is a rift/QS red oak floor - 8" wide w/o any seams.

And here is a wide plank SYP floor - widths 8" - 18" we installed in my Mother in Law's house. NO GAPS in 6 years!

Joe Hillmann · January 17, 2024, 11:34:48 AM

Everyone is posting pictures of there nice floors. I don't expect mine to be anything near as nice. Our current home has hardwood floors that are like a roller coaster, squeak, have thousands of nail holes, large gaps and 100 years of patching around walls, vents and plumbing that no longer exists. If I can get the floors in the new house to be of similar quality or slightly better I will be just fine with them.

A large part of the main floor flooring will be second hand flooring that my parents made and then salvaged after their home burned down a few years ago. So it is going to be VERY rustic and the worst of it will be leveled off with epoxy. That floor is going to be lots of very short pieces.

beenthere · January 17, 2024, 01:33:01 PM

Joe
My experience with the house I built in 1968, is put the oak flooring in dry at low moisture content (6% here) and lay it tight. After this length of time (56 years next month), the flooring in three bedrooms is all tight (but not the hallway). Didn't have enough flooring milled to finish the hallway so resorted to a supply of stored flooring from the same woodshop, and it had picked up moisture where it was stored for 2+ years.
So now the hallway flooring creaks some and has 1/32" to 1/16" gaps that are annoying but acceptable for what it is.

Tom King · January 18, 2024, 08:52:58 PM

Heart Pine floor boards in the Dining Hall of Hope Plantation are 40 feet long.

Picture will be added some time after the gallery is back up. I have one saved to a folder.

scsmith42 · January 19, 2024, 10:48:39 AM

Quote from: Tom King on January 18, 2024, 08:52:58 PM
Heart Pine floor boards in the Dining Hall of Hope Plantation are 40 feet long.

Picture will be added some time after the gallery is back up. I have one saved to a folder.

Wow - I'll bet that is one stunning floor!

Tom King · January 19, 2024, 05:34:27 PM

Here is a link to a picture of that floor. I think that house was built around 1805. They had better trees then than we do, and lots of cheap labor.

The floors in houses then didn't have anything on the wood. They were just scrubbed. This is mostly all original. It is quite stunning.

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scsmith42 · January 20, 2024, 07:48:20 AM

Quote from: Tom King on January 19, 2024, 05:34:27 PM
Here is a link to a picture of that floor. I think that house was built around 1805. They had better trees then than we do, and lots of cheap labor.

The floors in houses then didn't have anything on the wood. They were just scrubbed. This is mostly all original. It is quite stunning.

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Sweet! That's the look that I really like.

Joe Hillmann · January 20, 2024, 09:35:48 AM

I am impressed by anyone that can make 40 foot flooring.

I originally tried cutting 32 foot boards out of jacket boards from squaring up logs for my cabin build. It only took a couple logs to decide it was much easier to cut them down to 10 foot than to try and fight with 32 foot boards that were heavy and behaved like spaghetti noodles when I had to move them.

scsmith42 · January 20, 2024, 06:17:08 PM

We can make them.

All of my millwork equipment is strategically placed to allow us to process lumber of almost unlimited lengths. As I recall, 44' is the longest that we've processed so far.