KD Beech for Flooring?

One last follow-up comment...

David Weaver

I have planes (both american and european) that are beech and are full of bug holes. Depending on how this floor is finished (which includes finishing ends), if the bugs that find my planes find the floor of an unoccupied cabin (or occupied), the floors may end up looking like tiny swiss cheese.

Re: follow-up from looking up prices

Sgian Dubh

"French beech by the cubic meter, sawn "F-B1" grade, which I guess ..."

David, it indicates mainland European appearance grading. F = Fagus (beech); B = boule (sawn log reassembled to dry as sawn, therefore retaining the sapwood and more often than not, the wane [bark]); 1 = highest quality, i.e., least faults. Numbers used in the appearance grading go through 1, 2 and 3 to 4, the last number indicating lowest quality, i.e., most faults.

Additionally, because the designation B is used indicating the buyer must expect to find sapwood, and most likely wane too, simply because the boards are a boule, the additional commonly used designation of X (indicating the presence of wane) is omitted. X is used for sawn boards sawn to width where wane remains on one edge (X) or on both edges (XX). Slainte.

Re: follow-up from looking up prices

David Weaver

Thanks, Richard. Sounds like there would be a fair amount of waste in it (likely), but it's a deal I'd still love to get here!!

Wood isn't often sold by the boule here (but maybe it isn't there at the retail level, either). The bandmill owners who sell slabwood on craigslist and such often send partial boules or slabs of trees that were obviously downed trees leaving you to sort out more than just wane. They don't mention that they're sawing logs that were on the ground, though.

Re: follow-up from looking up prices

Sgian Dubh

"Sounds like there would be a fair amount of waste in it (likely), ..."

More than likely that would be the case. An old and commonly espoused guide here in the UK to allow for waste when buying, for example, seasoned waney edged oak sawn through and through is up to ~200%. So, for example, if you work out you need 10 ft³ for the project, buy ~30 ft³. In Americanese, that's 120 bd ft and 360 bd ft.

Sapwood is usually undesirable in species such as oak, and other timbers with dark heartwood, but it's not a fault (even as desirable as heartwood, mostly) in pale wood species, such as maples including, for example, sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus).

You mention bugs and beech, and over here our native beech is much favoured by common furniture beetle, as is walnut for that matter - I can't say how fond the beetle is of American beech, though. I don't recall how many antiques and other examples of old furniture that included beech I've worked on that were riddled with the beetle's tunnels. For example, I've found chair rails of beech, veneered on the show face with mahogany, that were/are sometimes little more than a powdery core, but the beetles had barely touched the show mahogany which can be anything from about 1 mm to thick to maybe 6 or more mm thick. Common furniture beetle is now rarely found in wooden artefacts inside most contemporary living spaces with their decent climate control systems; it's generally too dry for them to do much damage, but that's not always been the case, hence the beetle damaged old stuff. Slainte.

beetle damage...

David Weaver

beetle damage is less common over here, but some of the reason may just be that the american planes are often not as old as common planes found in england, and that the decent ones left were in drier areas.

I noticed a flooring site mentioned that beech floors are bug attractive and though that may be an issue in a cabin (humidity here in the summer with dewpoints reaching into the 70s sometimes would probably be enough, especially combined with trapped air and temperature drops).

I opened 4 beech billets this weekend in an attempt to make a pair of jack planes. Every one of them so far has some kind of fault, even though all were delivered in pristine shape. I think they're on average about 5 years old.

Steamed euro beech is probably more cooperative, but at this point, I can't imagine sawing an american beech tree through and through in any significant thickness and attempting to find defect free wood several years later (which is no problem with cherry, etc, over here - our local cherry is under attack from borers, though, and most anything that's not really old is over on the ground and full of woodpecker holes).

Still jealous, and would love to get a through and through sawn steamed beech pallet for $2 a board foot at retail!