Molder for tongue and groove flooring?
henryvt
| Posted in Tools for Home Building on
Hello,
I am building a house and having the timber from the lot milled into 1″ plank (4″-8″ width) to use for hardwood flooring. I am debating sending it out for planing and tongue and groove or trying to do it myself. Does anyone have any experience making hardwood flooring with a molder/planer? Is it feasible for about 10000 linear feet of plank? If so, what machine/brand would you recommend?
Thanks in advance for the help.
Replies
I ran a Wienig 4 head moulder for a mill..about a 40K pc. of machinery..had to attend a school just to start the thing up..
Trust me..send out the wood for milling.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations.
Hey I ran one of those Wienig's to, they sent a guy out to our shop to teach us, took two days.
Your right though, farm it out!
Doug
yup same deal..and then all the info on the knife grinder (whew) a true education..I loved that bugger tho'...helluva pc. of work..this was new back in..91? or so.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations.
We didn't have the knife grinder, we just bought them out. I think we had a fairly low end(if $25,000 is low end)model, but what mouldings that thing produced.
I know one thing, going from a shop with a Wienig to a shop that has to make S4S the old fashioned way is hard on a guy. Cant get those face frames as nice, and that's just one thing that it did well.
Miss that machine, and I'm with you on that grizzel stuff.
Doug
Edited 6/11/2004 5:20 pm ET by Doug@es
I have a shaper with a power feeder that could do it... Still, No way would I consider milling TEN THOUSAND FEET of lumber!!! Yipes... It would take weeks at 1000 feet a day... workin your azz off... Send it out for sure.
I'm your guy!
My sister sent all of her wood out and it came back nice and ready to be nailed into place. It cost a buck a bd.ft. and they used about 94% of the wood into flooring the rest was scrap.
Me I do it all myself. I bought a Grizzly planer, Grizzly Jointer Grizzly shaper and grizzly power feeder.. I guess I've spent around $2500 for the stuff plus cutters, and sharpening, etc. ..
In a lot of cases I bought much bigger than I needed (20 inch planer instead of a 12 etc.) but I use the equipment for a lot of other stuff so I didn't really calculate the costs directly. When I'm finished the average return on used equipment is between 75% and 50% of the cost of new..
Assume worst case and imagine that all I used the equipment for was one thing my costs for equipment would be around 700 to 1200 dollars but I'll be able to make all of my flooring about 5000 bd.ft. So my cost per bd.ft. will be about 15 to 45 cents per bd.ft. (plus my labor) the real reason to do it is because I can make things I can't have made.. for example some of my boards are 20 feet long! The great room will have a picture frame of 20 inch wide Burl in a field of hard maple.
anotherwords everything will be custom..
So, you haven't ACTUALLY run it all yet huh?..lemme know how ya make out..that grizzly stuff will be a melted mass of smoking steel..it is not designed for that kind of work..10K feet is what he said..
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations.
Defiitely, absolutely, no question.....get it milled on a quality moulder. The big ones can go from rough wood to finished product (including the relief grooves on the bag)in a single pass, though most of the mills I'm in are pre-planing.
what are you planning to do about the end matching? cabinetmaker/college woodworking instructor. Cape Breton, N.S
I've run well over 20,000 bd.ft. (so far) thru the planer with the only maintinance the replacement of one of the three belts, I think it cost me about $5.00 and took about three minutes to replace (not counting the 10 to 11 minutes it takes to drive to the closest auto parts store.
The use that planer has had way exceeds any normal level of work, I've run great big timbers thru and tiny little bits of trim.. All of the flooring for the billard room and the bridge are done, as well as the ceiling boards for the billard room.. All of the window trim and all of the black walnut exterior trim..
I've repeatedly filed 30 yard dumpsters up with shavings from it.
The jointer is evan older and it hasn't failed me once. The shaper has been used for maybe 3000 bd.ft. so far of various woods and the table saw which replaced the POS Delta (POS=piece of ship) hasn't been used much.
I've posted pictures of my timberframe and if you'd like you can search the archieves for it..
The Grizzly stuff is well made basic equipment that has held up beautifully.
10,000 bd.ft.? Piece of cake!
billiard room! maybe we should hit a few some time.
Well we'll have to wait a bit, first I'll have to get all of the wood (about 1400 bd.ft. of fiddle back maple and another 1000 bd.ft. of walnut) out of there, and move my daughter into her new bedroom (that isn't built yet) and then buy a pool table,...
Once all that happens I'd better sharpen my skills (er, learn how to play) But while I'm waiting I'll sit by the bar on the bridge having a cool one!
checked out your photos - nice work with the timber frame. never seen one like that before!
I used to run a 5 sided molder and ran some t&g for a guy. Definatly have a mill do it for you. They can give you a lin ft price if its the same width. If more than one width is run then there will probably be a slight set up fee for each additional width.
Flooring needs to be VERY precise. Assume your machines are commercial quality and your skills are high. You get a thousandth of an inch per foot runout. On a 10 foot piece you may have one end .010 bigger than the other. Multiply by a hundred boards for a small room. That's an inch wider at one end than the other. If the flooring is not perfect, you can't just bang them in and need to run chalk lines every couple feet to make sure it isn't going in wedged. Same deal with the tongues and grooves. Send it out to a place with at least a 4-side molder made for flooring. You can maybe buy $3000 worth of machines and tooling. Spend a good few hundred hours of time and come out with a marginal product. Send it out. Its worth the price.
Thanks to all for the advice - sounds like I should send it out. Does anyone know a mill in Vt (central) that would do this?
Frenchy has some decent equipment and an umcommon degree of stamina, but if you put much value on your timer, you will send it out for milling
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