CG Flooring

Here is a white pine log being sawn into wide boards for flooring. This log came from a test of a series of management activities that happened over the last 40 years. If you enlarge this picture you will see that there are no black knots in this 12' long log. The boards are about 14" wide and will be dried to 6-8% moisture content before being ready for finishing.This small mill can saw logs up to ~30" in diameter and 24' long. Most flooring is either sawn to order for rooms where there will be few joints or is purchased from inventory as random length and width boards. Lumber comes in many different species, grades (as determined by the presence or absence of knots, holes, or splits, and width and length minima), thickness, widths, lengths, and sawing method. These factors determine the cost of the raw lumber and may cause you to choose to have lumber specially sawn for your particular situation.It helps to know how the above criteria will affect how your floor will look. The best way is to go around to see floors that came from the kind of wood. We will place a number of pictures of floors we have supplied material for as places to start.

The ends of a pack of local circular sawn black cherry show some of the defects that could break up the monotony of completely clear cherry. Those that impair the load bearing capability of the floor would be cut out before shipping or installation depending on how the lumber is to be machined. This kind of material could be tongue and grooved and end matched as shown below.

A recent window casing made of recovered pitch pine is shown below. This region produces pitch pine on dry sites that burn often among other places. The trees normally grow slowly and may be quite crooked, but old mills and barns were constructed of beams from massive old trees. These beams when cleaned up can be sawn and reused for flooring.