making hardwood flooring?

[alfa]

Looking for advice re. making hardwood flooring for a ~300 sq foot space in my house. There is a manufacturer from Austria (Mafi - http://www.mafi.co.at/) which makes very unique, elegant flooring with a modern twist. Problem is customer service/getting someone to pick up at their only US location is impossible.

So, I've been batting around the idea of making it myself. Clearly a large undertaking but does allow for artistic freedom to make something pretty gnarly.

The look would be on the distressed end of the spectrum with wider planks and natural/created defects filled with contrasting colored epoxy. The space abuts white/cream toned marble so was considering either matching with a lighter wood and using contrasting colored epoxy to fill defects vs. darker wood with lighter colored epoxy vs. wood chemically greyed with darker colored epoxy. Mafi makes this and basically the look I want to reproduce.

Was wondering if anyone had any experience with creating tongue and groove flooring?
Any experience created distressed wood, specifically creating veining in wood? Without an automated apparatus to create long thing crevice, probably need to do it by hand with a modified spoke shave which begs the question which wood would be soft enough to work, but hard enough to last (anticipate lite traffic) - poplar?
What was the finishing schedule?
Any experiences using muriatic acid to grey wood?
Conflicted on how to approach the filling of defects (natural or created) with colored epoxy:
Approach #1 - (1) create defects, (2) fill with colored epoxy, (3) remove excess, (4) chemically distress.... would  that not affect the filled epoxy spaces if they are not masked? Conversely, Approach #2 - (1) distress/age wood to create desired patina, (2) fill with colored epoxy....how would one remove the excess epoxy without affecting the created patina - probably with a hand plane?

Any thoughts, comments or direction are greatly appreciated, Alfa

 

[ZeesWoodShop]

I think making your own is an option depending on your equiptment and the amount of time to are willing to invest. I just finished up 2000 square ft on a 5hp shaper, took about two days to go from rough sawn to tng floor. If you have the right equiptment its not to bad a job. Another option Would be find a shop that is willing to make s4s blanks you could hit with a router or shaper.

 

[jacko9]

alfa,

I made flooring for two homes out of wide oak planks.  In one home the wood finished out 5" wide and was close to 7/8" thick.  I T&G the boards with a cutter set on my shaper.

The first job was 1000 sq ft (in my own house) and I bought the wood 4/4 rough sawn mostly straight grained wood.  I built a large great room with a concrete floor and let it cure for one year.  During that year I stacked the rough sawn lumber 1' off the floor and used stickers between each board.  I was doing a complete rebuild on the house so I had time to let that part wait the full year.  When it came time to make the flooring, I rough ripped the boards slightly oversized in width and cut them as long as I could yield straight pieces.  Most of the pieces were over 20' long with nothing under 8' long.  I did this in batches of 200 to 300 feet at a time and stacked the wood in my shop for an additional 2 weeks after the rough cut to width.  I then ran the pieces over my long bed jointer and put them through the planer to a skim cut and let them sit for an additional 2 weeks.

I then ran the lumber through the jointer again to reestablish a flat side, rip the boards to width and finished on the planer.

I then ran all boards through my shaper for the T&G cut.

When I installed the wood part over frame flooring part over concrete I used 30 # building felt butted edge to edge and nailed into place with no problems at all.  The floor is 28 years old and I just had the surface refinished.

The portion over the concrete was a bit more involved.  I laid down pressure treated 2x4 lumber on 1' centers and shot them into the concrete with 4" hardened nails.  I laid ridged foam between the 2x4's covered with a moisture barrier and laid down 3/4 plywood nailed to the 2x4's.  I then put down 30# building felt and nailed the flooring to the 2x4's.

Great warm solid floor.

Jack

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Many (>30) years ago I made my own 7/8 inch thick red oak flooring, paneling and trim for a ~20ft x 24ft family room project, long before Festool came to USA.  My object was to approximately duplicate Bruce flooring's "Ranch Plank" style, although I did not duplicate the pegs/dowels.  I negotiated with an Amish sawyer for hand-selected fresh sawed boards at a price about 2X that of mill run boards.  That proved a wise choice because the entire truckload comprised boards between 10 and 12 ft length [maximum length limited by my truck], between 10 and 18 inches wide with at most 5 tight knots in the whole lot of which he also cut a heavy 5/4 thickness. The ends of the green lumber were sealed with paint, then stacked in a concrete-floor farm machinery shed to air dry for a little more than one year, then taken to be kiln dried.  After being KD, I ripped them to 4 different widths using my Shopsmith, and planed them using a 12 inch Belsaw planer/molder which I later used to create the T & G edges.  I then cut them into various more or less standardized lengths, and thereafter chamfered the perimeter of the top side of each board.  Then I pre-stained the sides and ends of each board.  Then I painted the lower parts of the ends and underside of each board with oil based paint.  After installation using screw nails and predrilling each hole, I stained the complete floor and topped the stain with a multi-layer phenolic then PU varnish system obtained from the commercial division of Sherwin Williams.

The floor was installed over an old concrete floor; the space was previously a garage, and after completion of the remodeling, the new wood floor would be below grade which was not recommended by most wood flooring manufacturers back then.   The concrete floor was thoroughly cleaned, then coated with bituminous cement, then 6 mil poly sheet, then 2x stringers of pressure treated wood ripped as required to make a level base frame.  Rather than rip the stringers on a taper from one end to the other to compensate for the sloped concrete underneath, I set string lines and measured from them to rip each stringer the width required and cut notches on the bottom edge to allow any water that might spill under the floor from the adjacent laundry/utility room to run down and collect at the low end adjacent the front wall of the room where a bay window / seat was installed. 3/4 inch water-contact grade SYP T&G plywood was installed on top of the stringers.so I could nail the strip flooring parallel to the stringers.  

All is still well after all those years.

The bookcase and fireplace mantel and trim were also made from that same lot of red oak.

The pictures are of rather poor quality due to being copied from old color prints and later recovered from a brochure I made for use in selling the house.  

 

[greg mann]

Nice to see you posting again, Dave. After all that work I'll bet it was it was bittersweet to sell.