Cut Your Own Wood Flooring

Get your groove back.

Cut your own wood flooring. Don t try and cut from the top down straight through. Set up the shaper or router table with a tongue and groove cutter. Run all of the flooring through the machine on one of the long sides and one of the ends. The second cut will produce a piece that has two good faces but bark on two edges.

Put the first board of the new row in place. Measure the face width of the existing flooring add the width of its tongue then set the table saw s fence that same distance away from the blade. Now cut the new boards to width by running the tongue side against the fence. Make sure when you make the mark to cut off the wall side not the room side.

In a past life i had thought of the idea of buying solid oak plywood cutting it into strips and using it as inexpensive solid oak flooring and i was told that i was an idiot and carpet was chosen instead a far more expensive option when i had already exhausted my budget. I left the bark on. Cut it straight through the center to make it manageable for your band saw. Find a piece and lay it alongside the hole and flip it over.

Start by cutting a line all the way down where you want your cut to go. Put the end against a 3 4 inch spacer and seat the edge snugly against its neighbor. Yes i did the sanding hence no photos of that step. That gives you a guide of sorts.

You can either pile those pieces off to the side and return them to the mill later to cut the bark off or deal with the bark as part of the milling process. Make sure to always cut the wall end of the wood so that you do not cut off the groove that fits to the tongue. Often when you cut like this the saw will cut out stringy wood. Planks can be cut with a hand saw circular saw or flooring cutter and most laminate flooring comes in planks that simply snap together with a tongue and groove system making it quick and relatively trouble free.

Cut it if necessary so the end is offset from the end of the board in the previous row by a minimum of 6 inches. If that happens that would result in a pretty big gap. The saw will wander all over. We ll cut it off when we turn the planks into flooring.

That piece is a keeper. How to lay down your own inexpensive wood floor and make it look gorgeous. One of the most popular uses for cutting wood floor planks with this saw is cutting the planks lengthwise also known as a rip cut. Cut the last length to fit leaving a 3 4 inch expansion gap and nail it in place.

A circular saw is sort of like a table saw just with the portability of a reciprocating saw. This makes it great for basic cuts or for a more skilled installer good for basic cuts for wood flooring as well. Scc cut all the 8 ft planks into 4 ft pieces then cut about 6 of those in half again to 2 ft sections.