Creating hardwood floor planks?

[brett gallmeyer]

I work at a cabinet shop in colorado. i run a 5 head molding machine. we make our own t&g flooring on this machine. i actuall just got done running $45,000 worth or reclamied barn wood. i would check with local cabinet shops in your area. they may have this kind of machine or may be able to refur you to a shop that does. i'm guessing that tis route would save you time and money ''equipment''. plus you could have it made out of whatever material you wanted.

[Matt Schell]

Do some research and look into some prefinished engineered hardwood. Kahrs makes a nice produce.

Because it is engineered it is much more stable than solid material. You can still refinish it about as many times as solid hardwood (since you can only sand down to the tongue and groove on solid stuff, and some of the high end engineered materials have very little to no bevel so the floor appears to be a finish in place floor. Of course you will pay $5.00+ per square foot but it may be worth the price

[James Suzda]

How difficult is it to mill hardwood flooring? Is it as simple as planing it and putting a tounge-and-groove on it at the router table?

I'm considering laying about 1000 sf of oak throughout my house and did some really quick price calculations. It looks like I could save $800-1000 in materials if I bought the rough lumber and milled it myself. But I thought I'd ask since a lot of things seem easier than they end up being.

I wouldn't try doing a 1000 feet of flooring with a router table and a table saw unless you have a lot of time on your hands. I did one job for a guy who had a bunch of air dried red oak that he wanted flooring made out of. (I will never take on a job like that again because all of the time involved cutting out the bad areas out of the lumber!) Anyway, I have a shaper equipped with a power feeder and a set of cutters to mill the ends of the boards and a Woodmaster 712 to mill the edges of the boards. I also have the gang saw on my Woodmaster to rip each board to the exact same width. You cannot have any variation of widths because when you install the flooring all the boards have to be the same if they are to butt up well. Before I got the cutters for the Woodmaster I was going to try to do everything with the shaper and it just didn't work out well because even with a bunch of feather boards, and other jigs to try to hold the lumber tight to the cutters the edges just wouldn't mill correctly or to my satisfaction. I never did get the 1200 SF of flooring done for the guy because he ran out of lumber. We only ended up with about a thousand feet. I suppose given enough time you could mill the edges with a router table, but it would take a long time to complete.

[Larry Edgerton]

Also, the prefinished flooring will hold up much better over time.

Greg

This blanket statement has no basis in fact whatsoever.......

[Greg Cuetara]

This blanket statement has no basis in fact whatsoever.......

From everything that I have seen ANY factory applied finish will last longer. If you apply a finish in an environmentally controlled room it will come out better and it will last longer than if applied in the field. There is no way to perfectly recreate the correct temperature and humidity in the field. This can be done in a controlled atmosphere in a finishing shop. If all things are perfect for the finish it will cure better, quicker and more durable. If it doesn't cure better in a shop then why do shops have finishing rooms which are environmentally controlled?

I would like to see the facts which show an in place finish will outlast a factory applied finish. From the research I have done the prefinished flooring has more coats of finish which will give it more durability over time now this may be just the specific products I was looking at but it makes sense to me.

[Paul Steiner]

I just finished putting HW in my house, it has been a 2 year project I did in sections. In my upstairs hallway I used bruce gunstock prefinished oak. This is about 100sq ft and I got this bruce at lowes %50 off because the boxes were open. I completed the hallway last summer.
To finish of the bedrooms this past month I bought st.michaels carmel oak from lumber liquidators, it is identical to bruce flooring. The carmel oak was $2.15 a square foot, Bruce is $4. The carmel oak is #2 grade that means there are some knots and some pieces need a groove or tongue on the end. These defects did not slow me down and everything looks great.
Personally I do not think you will save any money milling your own. I would put your efforts into other things for the floor project like maybe creating inlay work or custom trim.

[Neal Clayton]

From everything that I have seen ANY factory applied finish will last longer. If you apply a finish in an environmentally controlled room it will come out better and it will last longer than if applied in the field. There is no way to perfectly recreate the correct temperature and humidity in the field. This can be done in a controlled atmosphere in a finishing shop. If all things are perfect for the finish it will cure better, quicker and more durable. If it doesn't cure better in a shop then why do shops have finishing rooms which are environmentally controlled?

I would like to see the facts which show an in place finish will outlast a factory applied finish. From the research I have done the prefinished flooring has more coats of finish which will give it more durability over time now this may be just the specific products I was looking at but it makes sense to me.

whether or not that's true no floor finish is both permanent and maintenance free, so it doesn't really matter.

i have some 100+ year old floors with the original finish on them that are holding up pretty well, and some others upstairs that weren't maintained well at all.

the only difference in the good and bad is the good was religiously cleaned and waxed over the decades, and the bad was used, abused, covered over with carpet, and forgotten about.

and none of them were done in a climate controlled area because there was no climate control in 1908.