[masraum]

Originally Posted by devodave

Here’s an option. It sounds like you can take the boards down, so if you have a thickness planer, you could make a sled for it (1/2” or 3/4” ply, maybe even some 1x2 strips on the bottom to stiffen it). Sacrifice 1 board, rip it into 2 pieces, so you have both a single tongue piece and a groove piece. Plane these down to a centerline of tongue/groove to face thickness just shy of where you want your finished thickness to be. You could also make these two pieces from scratch as they are going to be your register jigs. Mount one of these to the sled, ensuring that your fasteners are well below the lower set point of the cutter head. Mount your T&G board into the mounted register, slide the other register jig into the T&G board and fasten to the sled, this one will be removed and reinstalled for each T&G. Set the depth of the thickness planer to your final thickness, allowing for the sled and the register jigs. This will allow each board to be planed to a uniform thickness relative to the T&G.

Right, I'd have loved to have just bought boards and used a thickness planer and router table to make my own TnG. I don't currently have a router table, thickness planer, or table saw. And the missus was pushing for this to be done quickly. I gave her the "in theory, we can go buy X and I can then install and it will probably take Y long."

Now she can see that the TnG is not consistent and for nice results, we'd either need better TnG that would probably be more expensive or to take a lot more time for prep and installation to make sure it goes together how she wants it. Or to take more time and make it so it goes together great in the first place, but with the added time and expense of the prep.

I don't think the problem is the thickness. I think the problem is inconsistently milled tongues and grooves. I don't think they are on the same center or something. I think I got either a bad batch or part of a bad batch. They aren't all like this. I'm hoping that the majority are better. I'd originally done about 95sqft of ceiling and another 30-35sqft of a small accent wall for a half bath and both of those went together OK. I've started the walls (below the ceiling that I previously did) and a lot of what I've done has been off, but then I've run into some that seems better.

I'll try to get a good pic, but it's tough to show in a pic.

The problem stuff is coming out like this (side view)


It's pretty regular, at least for what I just installed. I'm hoping that I can take care of what I've got installed and the rest will be better (within a decent tolerance, which this isn't), and will require less "fitting".