Fingerjoint flooring ?

[jim king]

Is there in the market horizantal fingerjoint flooring ?  

It seems like it would be a good product.  The short peices would make a nice looking floor and 10 or 12 foot long lengths would be faster to install.

If there is none in the market any idea why not ??

Could it also work for patio decking in long lengths ?

[crtreedude]

Hi Jim,

We use panels made like this in our prefab teak homes. Looks wonderful and most people prefer over T & G. Our panels are I think 8 feet by 2 feet, and yeah, a lot faster to install.

[SwampDonkey]

I've not seen it in flooring, only in structural lumber from milling cutoffs.

[crtreedude]

I've not seen it in flooring, only in structural lumber from milling cutoffs.

I am now thinking of starting to do beams using scraps. It is hard to find beam wood down here now so we figure we can take our waste and make beams out of it. Particularly hard to find anything longer than 5 meters. (and wasteful too!).

[woodman58]

I am a flooring installer by trade. I have installed gym floors for years and they are all made with small peices finger jointed together. If you have the capabilaty to do this, it could be profitable. Gym floors sell for high dollar. For the most part they are all maple. (Occationally oak). They are normally glued up to 8' in length. Then they give you starter bundles of different lengths to stager the begining of each row. They only have tonge and grove on the sides. The ends are square cut.

[jim king]

I had not thought of floor panels.  My direction was 6 and 12 foot long flooring T & G and end matched and 18 foot decking 1" x 6".  I was thinking to finger joint and then run thru the molder.

I have never finger jointed before and am not sure if the joints would hold up especially on the heavy decking.  If they did hold up it would sure look nice.

Any experience on end matching or ideas where to go .  My good friend Google doesn´t show much.

They only have tonge and grove on the sides. The ends are square cut.

How do you keep the ends from moving without end matching.

These are a couple of the woods that I would use for flooring .

[tyb525]

I'm not sure I could walk on a floor made with wild grain and colors like that, I might get dizzy :D Boy those sure are purty.

Would installing a paneled floor like that be more difficult if the floor wasn't perfectly smooth and level?

[jim king]

Would installing a paneled floor like that be more difficult if the floor wasn't perfectly smooth and level?

That would be my worry also.

We also have probably 100 or more simple figure species of many color types that are very dense and hard that would make great flooring.  We have a lot of Santos Mahogany and other simple looking  woods.
   

[beenthere]

I've not seen it in flooring, only in structural lumber from milling cutoffs.

Fingerjoint in structural lumber likely only when the fg pieces are glued up in a laminated post or beam.
The risk of failure of a fingerjoint is not high, but any risk at all in a structural piece has rendered it no-go.

Mostly fingerjoint are in products such as mouldings and trim. Flooring would fall into the non-structural product.

Producing a good, reliable fingerjoint (where the ends must be machined using two different milling heads that mate/match very well as well as the onerous sharpening of the knives doing the milling being critical) is a difficult accomplishment not to be taken lightly.  But don't mean to discourage some serious investigation into the process.

[SwampDonkey]

Here's a plant for example. They use lengths up to 3 feet and they aren't laminated. Making 2x4 and 2x6's. Seen them used in rafters and walls.

http://www.bidgroup.ca/uneeda/fingers-joint

[red oaks lumber]

i think glueing up then machining would work good , ducet machine makes a small endmatcher that can use fingerjoint cutters on its called the "ducet endpro". i owned one for a few years , only did endmatching but, the company i sold it to was going to fingerjoint with it  never heard how it went for them

[timbatrader]

Re where to find an end matcher years ago we had a purpose built machine that worked great but that has long since gone what we have used on occasion since is a double end tenoner machine for random length timber it is pain to sort and dock back to fixed lengths to put though. If you were doing fingerjointed stock it would all be the same length in which case a double end tenoner machine  would end match flooring as fast as you could load the lugs