Milling Reclaimed Lumber on the PH260

Bob McConnell, our cajun buddy from Louisiana and owner of Norwood Milling, sent me a picture yesterday of a new flooring installation from wood he had milled on the PH260. This was reclaimed pine made into flooring and as you can see it really looks great!

Bob says, "this is definitely a case of chicken crap to chicken salad or even better. This junk was on a ceiling in a warehouse in New Orleans!" Now, it's a beautiful kitchen floor.

Milling this old wood requires some extra care as many times this wood will contain metal fragments and be very hard. So, knife wear will be more than usual when planing this material. Carbide knives in the horizontal heads will help lengthen the time between sharpenings and is almost a requirement when milling reclaimed lumber. Of course, you will have to insure that all the nails are out of the wood with a metal detector, or you will surely be ruining knives. Coming off the ceiling, this wood will be fairly clean of dirt, however, if you get material that has been part of a floor or subfloor, you will find a lot of dirt and such will be embedded into the wood and this will cause wear on your knives.

Sometimes you will want to "center match" tongue and groove this material so the installer can determine which side looks best. Sometimes one side will have a better "patina" or will be more free of defects that the other, so, if the Tongue is in the center of the board, the installer can put the best side of the board up. This is made possible by using straight Tongue and Groove knives and not flooring knives, which will have an offset from the top to the bottom of the knife so the top of the flooring always fits together nicely. You will have to set the knives in the side heads of the PH260 so that the tongue and groove line up precisely with each other no matter which way the board is turned. This takes some patience and the use of test boards to get this set correctly. Spacers are used in the PH260 to set the heads at the right height. Once you determine this setting for a pattern, it is recommended that you note which spacers are used for which side so that you can easily go back to this setup.

Bob says he also supplied the beaded V-Match Cypress Paneling that you can see on the wall in this picture as well. He notes, "I don't charge extra for the knots!" This paneling is a standard seller for him in his business.

It's always nice when customers brag on your work. I suspect Bob will get more calls for this material once the word gets out about how beautiful the floor looks.