Milling oak for floor boards: advice

[muttley9050]

HI guys,

Taking a large dying oak down before the timber is useless, and it keeps dropping limbs on our stock fence. We need to refloor one of our rooms and also mill some window sill blanks as we have many a rotting sill. Im confident drying the sill blanks, but have never tried to air dry flooring, so thought id post my plans and see what you thought.

Got a guy coming with a lucas, gunna mill the flooring to 22mm x 130mm aiming to plane to 18x125mm when dried.

Going to stack in the roof space of barn(see pic)

Will rack between two of trusses with 6X2 and stack on rack with stickers, i will then stack all the sill blanks on top(150x75mm) to weigh it down.

Leave there for 18months, then plane and joint to size, take inside, leave for 3 months,then install.

Does this seem like the right process and enough tolerance to plane etc.

Thanks for advice.

James

[agg221]

I'd agree with your timeframes - but would be inclined to bring the boards indoors before jointing and planing as they will move at this point. I would ideally have the 3-month drying period while the central heating is on, on full boards, then plane, joint and fit as quickly as possible since they will be as true as possible at this point.

 

You could go slightly thicker than this - I did 25mm boards which were milled at 32mm and it worked nicely, but there was pretty much no movement. I stacked high and narrow - so built two stacks of boards only, side by side and braced to one another (long stickers that went right through), to keep everything squashed flat and stop it twisting.

 

Do you have any plans for how to support your boards at close spacing? I can't see an easy way to do this in your roof space. I would also be concerned if it gets hot up there as this may cause shrinkage cracks. Laying out standard concrete blocks on the floor, then stickering up off these may well be easier and more reliable.

 

Another general point with oak - the timber doesn't become unusable very quickly. I've pretty much used dead oaks only, some of which have been standing dead for a decade or more, and there's no real change.

 

When you get to it, I would suggest screws rather than nails as you end up having to force things back into place a bit, which is easier when there's a positive tightening action. Stainless or brass are needed if you don't want the wood to stain black.

 

Alec

[muttley9050]

Thanks for the reply alec.

Was gunna make a ladder type structure out of 6x2 and fix to trusses. Lay boards on this and sticker up. Kinda thought this would be a good plan as i always have bits im wanting to dry and it would be out the way, Hadnt consdered heat but thought with it being so open it wouldnt be too much of a problem,

Regards laying/fixing: Layed alotof floors in my time with different methods, problem with screwing is its pretty ugly imo, was toying between two methods in my head, I have floor board clamps and enough clamps to take twists out.

1. Standard lay, no tongues, fix with flooring brads.

2. Lay first board, biscuit joint nextboard to it, and from then on secret nail(pilot drill and pin through side) biscuit joint and continue.

Might be easier to have 25mm boards for method 2. This is slow method but looks excellent when finshed. Could always screw and plug with cross grain pellets but this is also slow.

On your boards you planed 7mm off. Was this with bandsaw. Thought with lucas i could get it in 4mm. 3mm off face and 1mm off underside. Maybe this is a little ambitious.

Do u think drying on blocks covered in a tarp is easier?

James

Edited January 27, 2013 by muttley9050

[agg221]

Hi James, you've done a lot more floors than me then (one so far!) but one thing about milling single, freestanding trees is that they tend to have a lot more stresses in them than a nice, clean forest-grown butt. This means the boards can move around a fair bit, which either means a lot of waste planing it out, or a lot of force to straighten it back up. 18mm will of course mean you don't need as much force as for inch boards, but the edge-bending was the thing I found needed the most force. I used clamps and it came out nicely, but it was hard work. I used brass slot-head countersunk screws, holes drilled to a stringlined mark and all slots lined up - which I quite liked as a finish. I could have plugged them - do you have access to a metal turning lathe, as I've made up a cutter before which worked like a milling cutter with a centre hole. This let me mount up rough cut oversize sticks in the tailstock and run them through the cutter mounted in the headstock, into the clearance in the mandrel hole. I could make lengths so fast that cutting loads more than needed was no longer an issue, which made the job relatively quick.

 

I half-lapped my boards - a compromise between the unremovable secret nailing and the annoyance of dropping something through the gap between plain boards (this followed the experience of dropping a credit card between the original Victorian pine boards upstairs).

 

The allowance isn't much to do with the bandsaw vs. swingmill. It's much more to do with 20% shrinkage (so your 22mm board would shrink to 18mm) and then some to take the surface marks out (say 1mm if you only face one side) and an allowance for cupping (another 2mm) hence about 7mm in total. I was trying to squeeze the absolute maximum out of one tree which had a mix of brown, streaked and plain boards. It came out really well, but the person doing the milling was not initially convinced (he conceded it had worked when I took the boards over to him for planing up). It also helped that I left the boards full width as sawn, so I could choose where to take my final boards from, taking into account both defects and subsequent cupping.

 

If you do end up stacking on blocks, I wouldn't cover with a tarp - you want the sides open so it dries. Best I've found is to stick some big, heavy lumps of timber on first, stickered off the decent boards, then some corrugated iron or ply, well weighted down and slightly angled so the rain runs off. You only want to cover the sides if you mill at the wrong time of year and need to slow everything down.

 

Alec

[muttley9050]

Id stuipdly forgot to allow for shrinkage. Good job i posted.

Regards plugging, i have a stock of oak cross grain pellets, if these match in colour i would plug with them, if not id use a plug cutter and digger like this

Disston Screwdiggers & Plug Cutters Set 4Pcs | Screwfix.com

That way your plug and whole are perfectly matched.

Thanks for the advice.

James

[agg221]

Id stuipdly forgot to allow for shrinkage. Good job i posted.

Regards plugging, i have a stock of oak cross grain pellets, if these match in colour i would plug with them, if not id use a plug cutter and digger like this

Disston Screwdiggers & Plug Cutters Set 4Pcs | Screwfix.com

That way your plug and whole are perfectly matched.

Thanks for the advice.

James

 

Hi James, yes I've seen the plug cutters. I went the way I did because I had access to the kit. I then used offcuts from the ends of boards (hence colour matched) and ran them straight through the cutter, effectively making a 6" stick of plug diameter material each time, which did a lot of plugs. Its not so easy though if you haven't got the kit available.

 

Alec

[Big Beech]

Id stuipdly forgot to allow for shrinkage. Good job i posted.

Regards plugging, i have a stock of oak cross grain pellets, if these match in colour i would plug with them, if not id use a plug cutter and digger like this

Disston Screwdiggers & Plug Cutters Set 4Pcs | Screwfix.com

That way your plug and whole are perfectly matched.

Thanks for the advice.

James

 

i looked at those, but the reviews seemed poor.

but i found these: from Rutlands.co.uk

 

simon

[agg221]

i looked at those, but the reviews seemed poor.

but i found these: from Rutlands.co.uk

 

simon

 

Veritas stuff is supposed to be excellent quality, and I like the look of some of those. I've found Rutlands before for Japanese tools.

 

Alec

[muttley9050]

i looked at those, but the reviews seemed poor.

but i found these: from Rutlands.co.uk

 

simon

To be honest,ive never looked at reviews before, just read and yes there not great. Ive had a set of these for probably 5 years, fitted countless thresholds, loads of skirting jobs and more. I can honestly say ive never had a problem with them. Sharpened plug cutters couple of times but would expect to. My only complaint is that the diggers dont give you quite enough length of plug, about 5 or 6mm. They are quick as diggers drill, coutersink and bore for plug in one go. And as for complaints that the cutters skate about, i merely start the cut at a slight angle, drill on high speed and get perfect plugs. The quality of the ones you linked to doeslook good though, but also cost 3 times as much. When im richer i may treatmyself to a set of japanese ones.

Thx

JAmes

[Guss109]

If your going to screw them down have a look for tounge tight screws I think there called. Not used them myself but have heard good reviews