Depth Of Relief Cuts In Wood Flooring

As shown in the example below.

Depth of relief cuts in wood flooring.

Freshly cut wood called green wood is well saturated with natural moisture from its sap and resins. Knowing what cut your hardwood flooring is isn t just for aesthetic reasons it s mainly structural. Similar to plywood engineered flooring is manufactured by sandwiching top and bottom layers of hardwood around interior core layers of lesser priced processed composites. Stress relief depth should be from 20 30 of overall thickness stress relief along the width should be from 50 65 of the finished width dimension.

Secondly it cuts the surface area that contacts the sub floor. This reduces the cost of shipping and makes the materials easier to handle. Plaster is pretty much the origin. Saw two parallel relief cuts an inch apart down the center of the flooring plank to be removed.

Relief cuts in flooring these small cuts out of the bottom of flooring actually have 2 purposes. Kerf cuts are small grooves sawed into the underside your deck boards using a circular or table saw to relieve the surface tension. As soon as the wood is cut it begins to release that its moisture content with thin areas in the wood drying faster than thicker areas. Set the saw blade depth 1 16 in.

The stress relief prevents your hardwood flooring boards from cupping maintaining it s flatness. Position the circular saw in front of the newly created butt joint with the saw guard retracted the blade clear of the flooring and the weight of the saw balanced on the. This would be done at 8 12 on center. This should be a series of grooves or fluted across the width not one large groove.

For stress relief i would cut across the width of boards and not with the length. The major reason for the kerf on the back of wood flooring is to lighten the weight of the boards after manufacturing. Blade widths are usually 1 8 make sure that the cuts are evenly spaced either one cut creating two halves two cuts creating thirds three cuts creating quarters ect. Firstly it breaks the tension that causes wood to cup.

The relief cut helped the molding span over the plaster grounds and the slight high spot right at the back of a jamb. The differing rates between the two thicknesses will cause a log or board to slip. To help counter the differing degrees of shrinking and swelling among these layers of unlike materials the bottom layer gets kerf cut. Cupping is when the board becomes curved across the width of the flooring.