Any recommendations on if one should spline ends of wide plank (6 7/8″) pine flooring. I believe I read in an archived post about slot cutting and inserting 1/4″ splines. Is this really beneficial?
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It is, if you do not glue and face nail the wide planks, you will have an uneven joint and probable sqeaking, so it is especially necessary for blind nailed flooring wider than say 4" or so. When glued and face fastened, it could be considered optional.
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Worked on a very expensive old house (mansion) gut & rehab a few years back...all new recycled heart pine wide plank in the kitchen....the Koreans who laid the floor sqirted a bit of yellow glue on the ends & butted it together....I was dumbfounded...everyone is so cheap these days...why do it right if it will last a year...
$250 for a biscuit joiner & biscuits, probably twice as long to lay it, but it won't fail...what do you think?
I am glad you mentioned the biscuit joiner because I was thinking that might be an alternative option to splining. Now the question is spline or biscuits? I don't have a problem investing in the joiner (now that I have a reason to buy one)and the floor is going down in my house so I want to do the right thing. I can biscuit joint all the window casing now, and biscuit joint the face frame kitchen cabinets and....
Another question, who makes a decent biscuit joiner for occaisional (non-production use), Porter-Cable?
I cheaped out and got a $99 Ryobi but it's done the job so far. I put off getting a biscuit joiner for a long time because I wasn't doing a lot that required it. Now that I have one, I just want to rip out all the stuff I did without it and redo it. This is one of those tools that I don't think you'll ever regret spending the money on. The results say it all.
"Now that I have one, I just want to rip out all the stuff I did without it and redo it."Exactly my fear too. Thanks
For only occasional use, you can set up a biscut bit in a variable speed router with a guide.
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You can cut slots with the biscuit joiner by making several plunges then dragging the joiner sideways to clean out the slot. Especially good when laying end matched flooring between two transitions. It's really simple...I just did this when I couldn't find my slot cutting router bit.
If you had to choose which method works best, would you slot cut or biscuit join. Also do you glue the biscuits or let them float. I have heard that the splines should float.
A slot cutter would allow you to cut longer slots in special situations like borders. It would also allow you to cut the proper sized groove at the proper depth in one pass. If your boards shrink a bit longitudinally, you may not want to look down and see a couple of biscuits. I generally match species (or at least grain density) when splining....I can imagine a spill soaking into a biscuit joint on your floor having a bad outcome when the biscuit, which is designed to swell, splits the flooring or makes a high spot that wears over time.That said, on small and hard to rout peices like mitered returns on open stair treads, it makes sense to use biscuits, though you could make a router work in a pinch.Let your splines float or just use a drop to tack them in place. No real advantage to gluing them and an argument could be made that boards shrinking at different rates could cause some problems. Biscuits like to be buttered, er, um glued.
I will go with the spline method, was considering using 1/4" ply or I could get 7/8" x 1/4" pine lattice (somewhat of a species match) a splines. Another reason I think the spline method might work better is when you get to an end board it might be hard to get that biscuit in unless there is enough clearance to the wall. I am planning on using baseboard with no shoe mold so I have to keep the edgespacing just under 1/2". If the moisture reading is acceptable I dive into it tomorrow morning. Thanks for all the info.
My two cents......splines.....glued to one board.
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