Ugh - flatten crap TnG with a 3-1/4 in. Corded Planer
 

We bought some pine tongue and groove to put on some walls for appearance.

The milling was crap, and these are feeling like siding because the groove is not on the same center as the tongue, so a ton of these are proud of the next by up to 3/64".

I've got a bunch installed and the missus just noticed and freaked. What would be the best way to get this stuff to be flat? Could I use a handheld power planer without mangling things? We are on a pretty tight deadline to get this done. The folks are coming to do the bathroom install next Wed. We've got to get this stuff installed and painted before that. So I've got evenings after work this week and then next weekend for the wood installation and at least 5 coats of paint (primer for resinous wood, 2 coats of primer, and 2 coats of paint).

Or is there a better way besides using the planer.

It doesn't have to be perfectly flat and smooth, but needs to be relatively flat and smooth.

Thanks.

Take it down. Use a table saw to either cut the tongue narrower or the groove wider so that it lies flat. Put it back up. I hope you didn't glue it to the wall.

I think using a handheld planer would just make it worse.

Not glued. Just nailed with brads. I don't think trying to fix the tongues and grooves would work. I also don't currently have a table saw. Maybe with a router table and TnG bits, but I don't have one of those either. If it was the floor, I'd possibly just use my belt sander, but I'd discovered that trying to use a belt sander on a wall is a real b1tch.

I'm pretty sure that i could get it good enough to make her happy with a hand plane, but not in the time that we have (and frankly I don't want to do that much hand planing, at least not with the pressure on to get finished in a short time)

If you have a belt sander and a time constraint, I don't think you have much choice. Try to use more than just your arms and elbows if it's low on the wall. Go through the grits. Don't spend a lot of time with heavy grit, just get things going in the right direction. I assume you will have to start cross grain/cross boards. A RO sander starting with 100 should get the wood going back towards being paintable. Nothing past 180 is needed for primer.

If you think it looks bad now, any kind of planer will totally destroy it. Zeke has the right idea.

Is there enough play in the tongue and groove to get some epoxy or hot melt in there and help to get it close? If not just belt sand it as mentioned above.

If it is milled wrong can you get it replaced?

That's what I'd do except for the time issue. I've got more than any one HD within 100 miles has. Any and everyplace that's got it is minimum 50 miles away.

I was going to go to one place that had it in 12' lengths (that wasn't HD), but getting in back from there was going to suck.

OK, thanks. I can do the belt sander (I used in on the floor and the 9.5' ceilings. So far the wall is all below 5', so I can manage this pretty easily (as much as any of this sort of crap is).

The good news is that this is all the idea of the missus, and she's seeing the trouble that it is. At least this isn't going to be my fault.

Previously, I used 80 for the floor, but it was hard as a rock (100 years old). I used it on the ceiling which is this new, young pine with 120 grit (which I've got a bunch more of), and the young pine cuts much faster, so I'm glad I wasn't using 80. I should be able to get the job done with the 120 grit and what's already on the walls.

I have a bunch more to install. I may try to put it together flat on the floor and sand it there and then reassemble it on the wall, as sanding on the wall is a b1tch.

Nope, it's pretty tight.

That was my fear. I could manage with a hand plane (if I had months), but I don't, so....

3/64 of an inch is well within spec for pine tongue and groove. How wide are these boards? You’re going to have expansion and contraction with pine in the humidity of Houston. It certainly can move this much. Are you talking shiplap or beaded tongue in groove with the backside being a V groove at the joint?
If this is knotty pine, I’m very familiar with this type of product as the ceiling in our family room has 8” and I have about 1000 ft.² of the 12 inch boards inside my garage. If you decide to paint this type of product, you’re going to have to use a shellac base primer as the knots will bleed through anything water-based.

It's 1x4, so the face of the board that you see is 3". The back is completely flat and the front is beaded. We are putting the back out (like the rest of the house, floors and walls). It's pine but there are no knots in any of the boards.

We do have a special primer specifically for this sort of wood (but like I said, no knots). And then another primer to go over the first primer.

I'm on board with rockfan4 and Zeke. A power planer could make a mess of things quick, fast and in a hurry. Sanding is the safer course of action.

Personally, I would like to see a photo of the bords installed and a cross view of the T&G together for a better idea of exactly what is going on for a better understanding.

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.

If these things truly are milled wrong, even if you sand the fronts, you’ll still have a problem on the backside. Obviously you won’t see that but I do tend to like to have things tight up against whatever they’re nailed to.

You can always push back the work you have scheduled for next week, the time constraint is only in your head.

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)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643136417.jpg

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".

That's ^^^^just defective product.

Yep, agreed.

So get it replaced and make life easy on yourself.

You said it's bead board? Then sanding the face will wreck the bead detail right? And you bought it from home depot? This is typical of home depot, their bin had newer and older shipments of the product. The knife set up for the shaper changed slightly for the T and G between batches and you got some of each. I'd return it all, including the busted up crap you yank off the wall. I don't buy milled products from that place because of stuff like this. I buy directly from a molding shop that checks consistency and puts a nicer coat of primer on too. Pricing is close to HD

It is bead board, but we are putting the flat side out. A lot of the house is like this. I thought it was shiplap, but eventually found out that it was the same TnG as the floors. We are essentially trying to replicate the look.

I'd love to put good stuff up. The problem for me is finding the good stuff. I'm sure someone in Houston has it, but finding it and getting it here is the hard part.

When I install the thin "bead board" product, I first nail on 3/8ths plywood, and then glue (panel adhesive) and nail the BB to that, You should come out with about a 3/4" wall thickness which a proper panel cap molding is set up to cover perfectly. You can use 1/2" ply as well, you just need to modify the panel cap a bit or use an alternative. This is even a better system. MDF works OK, but not always recommended in bathrooms. This might be a problem in TX. Plywood is your friend and all you need is "shop" grade.

I don't use screws on the ply in case it will come back off someday due to change in tastes. The whole 3/4 system will peel off the wall easily. Well, as easily as the nails allow.

Sorry Steve, but it looks like you should start over. Here's the thing, you only have to finish behind where you can't get to, like a toilet and pedestal sink. The rest can be done after the bathroom fixtures and cabinets have been installed. And it's not too hard to paint behind these things if you know the tricks.

Edit: You mentioned 5 foot high wainscot and 12' lengths. That's not a good yield. 4' high walls and 12 foot lengths is zero waste. Whatever you do, get the supplier to cut your rough lengths and stack it in your car.

Cupping may occur over time or a season of two so you are back to sq one.

This is a corner of the kitchen.

We're mostly trying to replicate the look, but only going part way up the wall like wainscot (versus floor to ceiling), but horizontal.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643151377.jpg

So, horizontal on the walls, and flat and smooth-ish, no beading.

I do like your idea of plywood with thin board over the top, but we don't want beaded, and I don't know that we could get 3" wide boards 1/4" thick to apply to thin plywood. That would be much quicker and easier. Is it possible to get that? Or hell, 1/4" plywood and 1/2" thick boards that aren't full of knots.

You didn't need to buy bead board to do that. You need to be going to a real lumber yard with your ideas. You can put a small chamfer on each board and then just butt them. No need for shiplap although that would be a nice way to do it.

One more thing, since you are going horizontal and have vertical stud nailing, you don't need plywood, that just helps even things out a bit.

To do this on an economy scale, I might have bought fence boards and staggered joints. A good scarf joint is hard to see.

I think you are tying to do this with far too few tools. At least you have a miter saw?

BTW, that 3-way molding joint at the top in the pic is fun. Not.

Yep, 12" sliding Dewalt Miter saw.

The walls of most of the rooms that aren't TnG are vertical studs on 24-ish" spacing with solid shiplap from 4-5' down and then every other shiplap board for the top half which makes this more of a pain in the rear. And now the shiplap has 5/8" drywall on top of it.

This is a partial view of one of the walls. The bottom was a single board, nearly 12" wide as a "baseboard." Drywall sat on top of that board and was nailed to the shiplap. The bottom half of the wall (except where the baseboard was) was solid shiplap. The top half of the wall was every other board-ish shiplap.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643152976.JPG

And the wife wants to get rid of the 1/4 round molding. I think I've tried to do one of those joints before. Yeah, huge pain.

If you get rid of the quarter round molding in the kitchen you'll be replacing it with another Molding then. There's a reason for that molding being there. I'm in the middle of doing a horizontal wall job now with no molding. Much cleaner look but it would be way faster to cut those long awkward boards within a half inch and trim it out. Which is what they did in your kitchen, I'll bet a Guinness on it

Can you say scribe? Like friggen crown molding, I hated it but I did a sh-load of it. That and base. Nothing wears a man out more than a day of running base.

I'm much happier with my tools in lockers and not the truck. I did my 50 years.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643155308.jpg

This is a room of my horizontal wall/ceiling project going on. I'm a masochist. I dropped the Cedars and let them sit a year to peck up. Milled it on the band mill and stacked it in the drying shed for a half year. Wide boards, not so straight after drying. Chalk line and free hand through the table saw with a 2° under cut. To install I scribe, bevel square, whatever it takes. Finished with two heavy coats of Shellac. The process is slow as molasses. I could have bought lumber but no. My wife thinks I'm crazy and I'm starting to agree.

Nice work, Greg. I know how much effort that takes.

There are some interesting things I have done like wrapping an exposed beam, actually a huge hip rafter that was exposed and the ceiling had sagged a little. Talk about scribing and undercutting, BTDT. I did 45's on the outside corners.

That was when biscuit cutters were the thing.

Sorry about the tool centric option earlier today. Here's another possible option then. Not sure how many walls you are doing, but could you lay the boards out on the floor perhaps, dry fit them, and segregate what you would hope is only two different profiled batches? That way, one batch goes on one wall, the other batch on another. The differences wouldn't matter then.

Jeez Greg. That's just fantastic. I wish I had your patience. And your creativity.

I’m a little confused on what the face is supposed to look like, but I’ve done “shiplap” two different ways. One, using 1 x 6 spaced about a nickel apart. Second, using nickel gap trim. See the profiles below.

As mentioned, you can get your material cut to length at store for easy transport home.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643159383.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1643159383.jpg

45 corners wrap on a long beam? Lots of clamps! built it on the floor then hoisted after the glue set? must have been stain grade or you would have lapped and bondo'd right?
And I know what you mean about base and crown. Back and neck killers. I've been doing both for 50 years too. Crown! cut upside down and backwards, cope the inside corners, radio off and don't talk to me right now or I'll F it up!

Thanks but it's more like bull headed stubborness

Fantastic!

It's basically supposed to look like a bunch of boards butted up against each other. No gap, no design, no V groove or anything else, just a bunch of boards butted right up against each other. Only the occasional slight line and maybe some wood grain. Maybe like that one board once installed.

Ok I re read. So the board thickness is consistent and it's the tongue and groove that's occasionally misaligned? You could just rip the tongues off of the offending boards. The boards won't bow out with a fastener every 2 feet. Not enough to be a big deal anyway.