Poor quality parquet flooring - re-engineering

[julianf]

I have a stack of parquet here, which has too much damage to lay as-is.

Its nice mahogany, but too many of the grooves are damaged (ie the top surface half of the groove has cracked off).

Now i either cut my massive losses at this point (i paid less than firewood price for it!) or i figure out how to re-engineer it.

I can normalise the thickness on the thicknesser without any bother, but im wondering what to do about the grooves.

Obviously they serve purpose, but im wondering if i cant get away without them. My floor will have a fraction of the abuse some school hall will have, and i can lay using modern adhesive. The surface theyre going onto is hand troweled concrete, so flat and smooth.

The block floors where you get three smaller blocks in a square, repeated at 90 degree rotations are never grooved, but just stuck down.

I dont know - otherwise i wouldnt be asking - what do you think?

 

[julianf]

Further to the above -

If i do decide to remove the grooves, what do you think the best method would be? I dont get on well with my friends table saw. I might think about making up a jig for my RAS, or, possibly making a sled to run them through the thicknesser in batches?

 

[stuartpaul]

If the backs are coated in bitumen adhesive (as is usual for second hand parquet) then I wouldn't put them anywhere near a thicknesser. The brittleness of the bitumen (along with the small bits of 'crap' that will be stuck to it as well) will shag your blades quicker then anything.

You don't say how long the bits are but again, putting short stuff through a thicknesser is fraught with problems. Not something I'd do even with a sled.

Using a slot cutter in a router table would be the best way to restore a groove, - you could then use a loose tongue to help with alignment etc.

 

[julianf]

The blades on the thicknesser are about to be replaced. This will be the last job they do.

I thought id use the old blades to remove the rubbish, then use a new set of blades to normalise to thickness.

I thought about re-cutting the slot. If i were to do that, as some of the parts are missing the tongue too, i would normalise all faces, and then recut both the tongue and the groove, but probably only somthing like 2mm deep. Just a registration really.

But do i need to? Its a fair amount of work, and id loose more width, so if i dont need to, i wont bother.

So that's the question really - do i need them tongue and grove when laying onto a concrete floor?

Its 15 square meters worth...

 

[graduate_owner]

If you decide not to re-lay the floor, could you perhaps glue blocks together to make useable chunks of mahogany for wood turning?

K

 

[julianf]

I purchased a full size snooker table for the slate a couple of years back. I kept the flat wood, but just gave the legs away...

The idea of sticking these together fills me with dread!

I need to count how many i actually have, and do some sums to check - it may be that i have 3x what i need, or it may be that i have half. I should check before getting too far into it.


As a side note -

I purchased them from ebay. The seller was open enough - they had purchased them and thought they were too much of a task. My winning bid was all of £33, whilst their purchase price, sight unseen, from some flooring company, was £300. I feel for them, as they were, basically, conned. Its clear not all the blocks are even from the same original floor. Wastage without re-engineering will be over 50%.

I might have a look to see if there are any more about - they certainly cant be worst than these ones!




Back to this job -

The rear side of the blocks are in far superior condition to the top sides. The top has been walked over for years, but the rears have been nicely covered in tar... If i do reprocess them, ill flip them, and get the fresh side on the top.

 

[wallace]

I got some parquet from my old school which had a very heavy glob of bitumen on. I decided early I did not fancy chipping the tar off so firstly tried a bandsaw to remove the tar plus a bit of wood, this did not go well and the blade did not last long. I also tried to plane the side that had had the foot traffic, this went even worse and the knives were smhoo. In the end I opted to saw the faces and then dimension them. This was slow but the end product was fantastic to lay and only needed a very light sand with the ROS.

 

[julianf]

I think im kind of stuffed with this one anyway.

I have 19sq mtrs. I need 15sq mtrs. So i figured buying a touch over 25% more would do me.

But, without re-processing, there will be too much waste. Even if i lower my standards, its touch and go, and id have to do all the work before i knew for sure.

If i re-engineer them, even though im only loosing milimeters, on the 1200 or so blocks im going to need, those millimeters add up, and, again, im short on area.

Im at a loss as to what to do now. I was going to lay slate, but then spotted this lot. Ive kind of got into the idea of a wood floor now, but i dont think this lot will work without some extra, and im not inclined to pay £20 / mtr for stuff in the same state (ie that ill still have a massive percentage wastage) from dealers.

I dont mind putting in the work with this lot, but, at present, i just cant make the area sums add up. I dont want to put in all the work, and find im short at the end of it all.

Next week's question - what to do with a load of small mahogany blocks! (other than put them on a floor)

 

[graduate_owner]

My suggestion regarding glueing was so that you could get some value out of them rather than perhaps put them in the next stove. You could glue a dozen and put them on the lathe, then glue some more at a later date, when you feel like a bit more turning
If you want to lay them, could you perhaps lay an outer perimeter in a different wood, then infill with the mahogany. Perhaps contrasting colours? You could even use planks rather than blocks for the contrasting perimeter. Or your original idea of slate as a perimeter?

K

 

[Jake]

Some woodblock was joined by dowels rather than t&g. I can imagine it being a pain to lay, but you'd lose less face (edit: face area off the blocks, not personally).

 

[julianf]

Whilst looking on ebay for spindle moulders or router tables for sorting the grooves, i realised that what i really want is a floor, not a spindle moulder.

Ive worked out that 50% of what i have is entirely usable, or will be after cleaning, and 50% would need re-engineering. Very little would be total loss. This would give me the coverage that i need, with this pattern -

That's a herringbone, but, if you look, the rows are uneven width - its to scale, and one would be 72mm (the original size) and the next would be 62mm (the re-cut size) - it would all work with what i have.

...but

Id need some setup for remaking the edges. Even on the good stuff, the tongues dont always match up with the grooves, so they would all need normalising to some extent. Which would require, at least, a decent router, and either making or buying a router table.

...then maybe £60 of adhesive to stick them down with, £40 of filler, £50 of finish. That's not too far off the cost of just doing the job in slate. I could lay 15sq mtrs of slate in an afternoon & evening even at my armature pace!


Its a shame, as id got into the idea of a wood floor, but, ultimately, i want "a" floor, and not just more "projects"!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Armchair?

 

[--Tom--]

My parquet is all laid as blocks without t&g and has stayed down for 80 years since the house was built. Trying to relay blocks with t&g would be a nightmare IMO as they will no longer all be even thickness, so the t&g will be more hindrance than help as you could end up with gaps under the blocks which will sound hollow and feel springy to walk on.
We're looking to extend and so I'm looking at reclaimed parquet for the floor. Plan would be to remove tar by scraping and wire brushing, saw off any t&g (or potentially plug the g if it's in good condition, then relay with modern adhesive.

 

[julianf]

I tried thicknessing to remove the tar, and, whilst it works, its messy, and you wouldnt want to do it with new blades.

I tried a blow torch and a scraper, and that was simple, but you would really need three hands, or a jig.

Ive concluded that if i suddenly accquire more of this, and go about fitting it, that as we have just got a new oven, i will use the grill on the old one - line up a some under the grill (nice even temp), take one out, scrape it, load one, and so on. It would be very very quick that way.

Then, if needed, id run though the planer etc. just to take off the final residue - that's if i wanted to use an adhesive that wasnt suitable for tar (ie to get the block entirely clean)


Out of interest, what thickness do you think would be suitable? These blocks vary - i guess to get a nice fresh, clean finish on all of them, id have to go down to 18mm. They are mostly around 21mm at present, but some are a touch slimmer.