technique for banding hardwood floor

First of all I don't claim to be an expert. When I did a room like that, I
started at the center and ran both ways as far as I needed, leaving the ends
run wild past the border to be. Then I took a Circular Saw with a straight
edge and cut the ends to length all at once. Then I used a Flooring router bit
to router a groove in the ends, inserted a new tongue, put in the border and
then the remaining boards. Hope this helps!

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 12:29:03 -0700, Leonard Lopez <[email protected]> wrote:
> I need to lay the floor in a new house. I would like to have something
> like black walnut as a band around some of the floor at about 6 inches
> from the wall.
>
> When the banding material goes in the direction of the flooring -
> just lay in a walnut board.

Yup.

> When the banding goes crosswise to the
> flooring I am at a loss. Cutting the flooring 6 inches short, placing
> in the walnut crosswise, and then putting in a bunch of short pieces
> from the walnut to the wall seems very tedious, and will probably show
> some alignment problems.

It adds some time, sure, but you get the benefit of having tongue and
groove joining between all the boards to keep things all together.
The field will then have two end-cuts on each row, for mine I chose
to biscuit them together but that's probably overkill.

> I thought about putting in the flooring as usual and then routing
> a dado for the walnut. Probably make the rout .5 inches deep. That
> would leave the original .75 inch oak boards intact. However, I could
> then put a .5 inch thick piece of walnut into the dado. How do I attach
> it. If I glue it, I will get the classic cross grain problem. If I
> nail it, they will show. I though about puting a groove at the bottom
> of the dadoed sides and then sliding the walnut (with rabbets on the
> edges) into place. However, that seems to require a trick sequencing
> problem for laying the boards out.

Sounds like more screwing around than just laying the border, filling the
field, and then using the cutoffs/scrap from that to do the edges. In a
30' room, I was off by about 1/8" by the time I got to the "top" of
the field, so I took 1/32" off of each of 4 boards to even things up.
Not noticable, even though I know where it is.

Dave Hinz

[email protected] (ToolMiser) wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> First of all I don't claim to be an expert. When I did a room like
> that, I started at the center and ran both ways as far as I needed,
> leaving the ends run wild past the border to be. Then I took a
> Circular Saw with a straight edge and cut the ends to length all at
> once. Then I used a Flooring router bit to router a groove in the
> ends, inserted a new tongue, put in the border and then the remaining
> boards. Hope this helps!
>

That is one way, but I've found that to be more time consuming than this
method.

The poster doesn't have a typical border described and I recommend he
consider doing a standard 9 3/4"(4 board) or 12"(5 board) border. Lay 3(or
4) boards around the perimeter with corners either mitered or log-
cabined(easier). Best to lay the border square and backfill where the walls
are not square. Install tongue-out. Follow with the feature strip and then
another strip of oak. This will put you either 9 3/4" or 12" from the
wall(+ expansion space!!)
Then start to lay your field, preferably routing a groove at your ends. If
you cant route your ends, you will have to chisel the border tongue at the
end cuts.
It goes quickly after awhile, set up the chop saw and router right on the
floor where your end cuts are. The less you have to walk, the faster it
goes with the least effort.
Hope that was clear enough, Ill be back in a couple of days if you have
more Qs.



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