If you have to patch a hardwood floor, you could remove the damaged floorboard with a multitool, take a half hour in the process, and burn through a couple of expensive blades, but there’s a better way.
David Hornstein, from Lexington, Mass., has figured out that making that initial cut is a heck of a lot faster if he uses a biscuit joiner. Here’s how it works.
The first thing we do is screw a block to the scrap piece—the piece we are going to replace—so that the holes are not in the good floor. And this block has been cut at a right angle, so it’s going to serve as my guide. Now I need a center line down the flooring that I can align with the center line on the biscuit joiner. Once I’ve got that center line, the next and most critical part of this process is to adjust the depth of the cut on the biscuit joiner so that the width of the cut you’re going to make matches the width of the flooring. In this case it’s 2-1/4-inches, I’ve made my adjustments, I’ve set the machine at a zero biscuit, I’ve fine-tuned it with the fine-tuning screw, and I’m ready to go. I put the biscuit joiner in place, register it against the block—which means I’m square, line it up on my center line, turn it on, plunge, come back up, and that’s all there is to it. Now I still need to use an oscillating multi-tool to finish the cut on either end, but that’s going to be a lot faster. If you don’t have a multi-tool, use a hammer and chisel.
Great tip, David. Thanks for sending that in.
Kevin Ireton is editor-at-large and a good friend and former colleague of Chuck Miller’s. Keep your eye out for more Better Way videos from Kevin and several of our other regular contributors in the near future.
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More handy tips:
Make a door buck with scrap material
How to Make a Custom Dust Collector for Your Router
How to Apply a Weathered Finish to New Wood Siding
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Please, please, please cut that Jeep commercial!
Oscillating multitool blades do not burn out that fast if you let the tool do the cutting. If you push or lean into it, the teeth on the blade will overheat and wear out very fast. I have done dozens of patches in maple and oak flooring with one blade, each cut taking around 2-3 minutes. The biscuit joiner method is finicky to set up and, ultimately, the cut is being done blind because the blade is obscured, not very ideal.
I replaced a lot of flooring, mostly wider than 3 inches with a Rockwell plunge saw and a multi tool and it worked great, also could cut the damaged boards lengthwise to get them out.
That's a good innovative tidbit that I’m going to have to remember to keep in storage for future use! What with 3 kids running around my house these days I won't be surprised if I'm going to have to make use of this to get some of my floors replaced in the real near future!
Very impressive.. Really good