I want to make a porch of kiln dried black locust. The porch is covered , off the ground and in central Virginia.
My question is should I have it milled 4 inch decking board or tounge and grove random width. The latter probably would use the wood most effeciently. My builder was afraid it would cup a bit and look bad.
Would you all recommend T&G or just the 4 inch boards?
I think it would really be pretty to do it like flooring and then sand it and oil it.
Thanks
Frank
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Replies
Wouldn't random width without the tongue and groove be even more efficient?
whichever way you do it that black locust should last just about forever, we used it all over the place in Upstate NY (retaining walls, posts, etc.) and I NEVER saw a piece of it rot or decay in almost 30 years.
But I never saw that wood used in a milled state, always as 'logs'.
It seems that your question is whether that species of wood will cup more than other, more typical flooring woods?
There are two schools of thought about porch floors, one that feels that T&G won't last (the 'deck' group says to keep an air space between the boards to let them drain/dry) and the other feels that T&G can work if the joints are kept perpendicular to the house and the wood is kept dry (by the roof and by pitching the floor away from the house to drain any water off) and kept well treated (paint, usually).
Edited 6/26/2002 12:27:36 PM ET by Norm
The locusts are very resistent to rot anyway so keeping them oiled would likely help them laaaast 'till your grandchildren have children.
But my recolection is that the wood is a little too splintery to make it easy to mill T&g out of it. I would probably stay with square edge.
Frank, Jon Arno responded to a black locust question in Knots about 3 weeks ago. I fond it by typing in 'black locust ' in the Knots search. Jon, as you probably know, is a top notch wood technoligist and there might be something interesting for you.
BJ