To make a convincing patch in a hardwood strip floor, you’ve got to stagger the ends of the adjacent strips. Otherwise, the patch will look like a poorly concealed trap door. The problem is, how do you accurately and efficiently make numerous cuts in hardwood strips while they are already in place? The top left drawing on p. 32 shows how I recently solved this dilemma. The tools required are a plunge router with a 1/4-in. or 3/8-in. straight bit, a circular saw with a nail-cutting carbide blade, safety glasses and a face shield, a chisel ,and a nail-finder (you can use either the swinging-magnet kind, or one of the coil types powered by a battery).
First, find out which edge of the strips have the tongues, and therefore the nails. If you’re working from a visible end, this will be obvious. Otherwise, find a spot in the middle of the patch that doesn’t have any nearby nails, make a couple of cuts across a strip and pry it out. Next, run the nail finder down the edge of each strip and mark the locations of the nails. Now you can lay out a series of staggered cut lines for the new strips that avoid any nails. To sever the nails, make plunge cuts on the waste side of the strip flooring — be sure to wear the safety goggles and face shield during this operation.
I used my router, guided by a strip of wood, to make perpendicular cuts across the strips. The width of the cut gave me enough room to get the end of a pry bar under the strip that needs to be pulled up. At this point, a chisel is sometimes handy for splitting the tongue off a strip that is reluctant to come out. I also use the chisel to square the ends of the slots. Chamfering the leading bottom corners and edge (plus a little patience) will help as you insert the replacement strips.
Ted Gamer, Chicago, IL