I am hoping to lay a solid, hard, Canadian white maple floor onto battens fixed to a concrete floor. The battens will be 12″ apart and are cut from chipboard. The maple planks are from 5 1/2″ to 7 1/2″ wide and the unfinished thickness is 1 1/8″. I hope to get the boards machined and T&G’d, next month.
I am worried about nailing the boards down as the maple is very hard and splits if I drive any sort of nail into it. I can see the tongues of the boards all being split off from the planks if I simply go at it with a Nail gun.
Should I drill pilotholes at every batten position before banging the nailer? Are there special nails for maple floors? Thaks and rgds. Polyfilla
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Greetings polyfilla,
As a first time poster Welcome to Breaktime.
This post, in response to your question, will bump the thread through the 'recent discussion' listing again.
Perhaps it will catch someone's attention that can help you with advice.
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Edited 10/3/2006 2:24 pm ET by rez
Wow, that's pretty wide for any wood, let alone maple.
Think about the maple gym floors you see in high school gymnasiums...narrow and short pieces...for a good reason...to minimize the amount they will open up when the heat is on.
As long as you've still got the machining step ahead of you, why not also consider ripping those boards down to 2" or 3" wide, then T&G.
If you use a standard flooring nailer with staples or cut nails, you won't have much trouble with splitting the tongues.
To be perfectly honest....I'd be far more concerned with the substrate you're planned on nailing the floor to than about splitting maple with a flooring gun.
"Chipboard"?
I'd consider going with a solid wood....or at least a thick (3/4" or more) plywood.
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
If I understand you correctly, you'd drill pilot holes for every nail? Lot of work. Then, one heck of a time shooting a nail right through each pilot hole - hope you can aim well when nailing. Perhaps I misunderstood your intent.
First thing is to definately get rid of the chip board, and even plywood isn't idea. A little moisture and chipboard swells and may even fall apart.
You are proposing wide maple, and then are proposing to apply it over a slab. I think this could well be a recipe for folly. How dry is the maple? You do need to know given the likelihood of shrinking and swelling.
You need a substrate that will hold nails, or you will have a true "floating" floor
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polyfilla,
So far everybody has given good advice.. first forget the chip board.. nail into solid wood.. second don't nail a board that is that wide.. Maple shrinks and swells a great deal. I'm figuring on 1/4 inch gaps on my boards if I install during the heating season and the wood is dry to less than 7% moisture or less.
(That is critical but easy to check)
If you want it done without doing the calculations then you need to install absolutely dry wood during the steamist most humid days of summer.. Then you can jam the wood together as tight as you can get them. During the winter heating season the gaps will open up, a lot!
Expect it!
Otherwise if you put the wood together tight during the winter. Once the humid days of summer arrive you will have a really powerful jack which will either buckle the flooring or literally move walls.
As I said don't nail. if you edge nail like is normally done with boards that wide you will have too much wood movement..
You can face nail with decorative nails or you can screw and bung the counterbored holes. Either way better plan on some way for the wood to shrink and swell.. elongated holes is one appraoch . (PS wood swells sideways not lengthwise) if you don't allow for that shrinking and swelling the nails will slowly loosen. (not a good thing ;-)
Since you are putting the flooring on a concrete floor you won't have the option of drilling holes in the sub floor and screwing them down from underneath..
By the way you might check on buying the equipment needed to make planks into flooring.. I looked into it and it cost about what the milling charge would have been . the pay off was I wound up with a lot of equipment to use for other projects. (and when I sell it as used I'll recover a lot of my original purchase price.)