The Difficulty of the Hard Wood Floor.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 5, 1 March 1909, Page 177

The Difficulty of the Hard Wood Floor.

Crow Taylor, in Carpentry and Building, strongly advises carpenters to specialise in the matter of laying hardwood floors. What, you may ask, are the mysterious points surrounding the laying of hardwood flooring which make it so difficult. There is really no mystery about it. It is simply a matter of details and close attention to things that the average carpenter may have considered as immaterial in the laying of flooring. For one thing hardwood flooring, especially where it is cut up into small units or squares, must be kept and laid as free from moisture as possible. The manufacturers kiln dry it until, after testing and baking, there is no further evidence of moisture in it. Then they keep it in heated warehouses, where the temperature varies but little throughout the year. To follow out this idea of close attention to prevent moisture such flooring should not be laid during wet weather unless the carpenter has some dry house or place where he can keep it heated enough to dry out all the moisture that it might absorb from the air. This may look like drawing it pretty fine, but is just what it takes to ensure close joints in the floor after it has been laid and remains so in a heated room t<*" some time. When a hardwood floor is made by a carpenter from strips which are cut and paved into whatever design is wanted, one mistake that is frequently made is in the end jointing. The side joints are usually made by the flooring man, but the carpenter, from long habit, is inclined to bevel his stock under a little in cutting for end joints so as to ensure a close fit. This is, probably, one of the most common mistakes in floor laying; in fact, one might go into it at length and prove that it is a mistake in any kind of joinery. But we are talking of hardwood floors now, and here is how it is a mistake to saw under or bevel in cutting end joints in hardwood flooring. All hardwood flooring is finished off: after it is put down. In the process of finishing off some strips may not be cut down much, but some are dressed down l/16in. any way, and, naturally, if a joint has been bevelled or cut under when the face it cut down the joint immediately begins to open up, and it opens up in proportion to the amount it has been bevelled and the amount that it has been cut down. The thing to do, therefore, in joining hardwood flooring where it is in thm strips or standard thickness, is to use a fine saw and cut perfectly square. Then when you get a good joint you can feel safe about the joint, even if l/16in. is taken off the top in smoothing down. So you see, instead of being a matter of mystery, the proper laying of hardwood flooring is a matter of simple intelligence and close attention to small details.