Last evening my son, his friend and I started laying 1200 sf of 1/2" T&G bamboo flooring. Got a HF flooring nailer using Bostitch 2" flooring cleats. I had to shim the foot (supposedly for 1/2" flooring) with a thickness of 2 washers to get it to sit properly and fire the cleats into the tongue in the right spot. Adjusted pressure to 65-70 psi to get a proper cleat penetration of the tongue. So far, so good. We anchored the first run up against the wall with my 15 ga finish nailer. Snapped a chalk line out in the room just past the underlayment padding to make sure the first run was in alignment. An obstruction projected two feet into the first run. When we made our first run past the obstruction, we were off by a strong 1/16", so there was a gap we couldn't close and everything behind us was nailed down. We all just sat there for 5 minutes thinking "dang, this isn't going to be easy". Looking back it appears we just weren't careful enough to get a good strong chalk line (probably close to 35 feet long) and didn't measure carefully enough off that line to get started.
I am used to click style flooring where you can "scootch" everything around to line up. No can do with nailed flooring. I am dreading going around the six foot long island, and really dreading going around the closet/base cabinets/fridge as we circle around from room to room.
Any tips on how to deal with the alignment issues as we move to our next obstacles? We could rip one side to match, but would loose the tongue. Please, those with experience doing this, not armchair answers.