biscuits for laminate floor butt joints
My garage addition is going so slowly that I bought the laminate flooring a year ago and am just now installing it. Problem. For some reason I had thought the boxes were 25 sq ft of coverage, but they were only 20. Therefore, I’m short of material and it’s no longer available. The warehouse was able to find a few very old boxes of the laminate, and now I have enough in terms of square footage. But it turns out that the tongue and grooves of the new materials do not click into those of the older material. So, where old meets new, I was wondering if I could just cut off the tongues and grooves and use little tiny biscuits to do the joining of the laminate planks. The laminate is 8.3mm in thickness, which is 5/16 inch. I’m imagining a narrow cutting blade, say 1/16″, and some homemade biscuits. Anyone have a suggestion? Another thought I had was to drive little nails into one edge then cut off their heads and file them to sharp points. Then pound the adjacent plank into place. Yeah?
Replies
First things first. Never admit that your project is going very slowly. Tell people that you bought the materials at a very good price, and then designed the addition around them.
Biscuits are probably way too thick. I think you can get a slot cutting router bit that does a fairly thin slot, then rip pieces of thin plywood on a table saw. Might have to go to a hobby shop and buy what they call aircraft grade ply ... I think you can get multi-ply in 1/16 and 1/8 thickness. A little pricy, but good quality.
"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
I think if you tried the nail trick you would end up splitting the ends. I just finished up a laminate job and I was one small piece short. I had pieces but not with the correct end so I ran a bead of glue to keep both ends aligned. I kept a weight on the joint for awhile to keep them level in case one side wanted to lift. Time will tell if it will work. I can't see any reason why it won't.
roger
Yes, never admit that your project is going slowly. There is a chinese proverb, "Man finish house.... Man die."
But you, Barbara, appear to be exempt from this particular proverb, being a woman.
Is the laminate over foam underlay? If so you could perhaps omit the underlay in portions where you have butt joints and replace it with ply in same thickness--then glue butt ends both down to the ply thus locking the joint? It woudn't take much glue area to lock the joint. The less the better for expansion/contraction.
Good luck.
I'd be tempted to cut off the bottom flange of the groove piece, and then use your utility knife or sharp chisel to shave whatever you need to from the bottom of the top groove and the top of tongue until they meet without interference. Then run a smear of consturction adhesive between the two and weight it down.
With this technique, you should get a good solid mating between the actual pieces.
If the sides clip together, then just finish with a full run and then use the new stuff. As for joining the "odd" ends, you could make a male and female "V" joint to give you some glue surface and alinement.
Many thanks to all who replied. I considered each of these options, and I liked all your ideas. What I ended up doing was checking the blade on my table saw, and I saw that it was about 1/3 the thickness of the laminate. So I centered it in the end and went for it. Cut a groove about 1/4" deep. Then got some hardwood and made some splines, which looked like big popsicle sticks. I made them thick enough to fit with just a little bit of movement in the joint so that wood glue could take up the rest of the space and allow for some expansion due to the moisture in the glue. It worked out really well, and was very fast to do. Now the floor's done, and I'm moving on to the baseboards. Thank you all for your input.