I want to cut some reclaimed wooden boards into tiles..

Think broken chunks of scaf board into 100mm x 100mm x 12mm

Should I be looking at hiring a bandsaw or table saw?

Chop saw, aka a mitre saw, assuming it is already 12mm thick. If you need to thin it as well then that’s a harder job. Thickness planer

The evolution rage from screwfix is a decent diy option and useful for various diy tasks.

i’d say a decent chop saw if you want good consistent square edges.

I’d be worried about them warping/shrinking/expanding over time if cut that small?

You wanna get into these:

Yep chop saw. That and a percussion screw driver are incredible bits of kit.

Would have struggled to get this far without them!

[/url]20170809_210232 by mcivord, on Flickr[/img]

I don’t want to be doing any planing as I dont want to lose any surface patina.
Boards are about 40mm thick so I’d be looking to get 2 or even possibly a third smooth sided tile from that.

With the chop saw I guess I could cut some 40mm x 100mm x 100mm blocks, and then cut each block down to two 19mm tiles or three 12mm tiles?

I’m a bit worried about losing a finger doing that though

What’s a percussion screwdriver? Like a Yankee?

Wow, a Yankee. That’s a blast from the past, my Dad had one of those… 🙂

My granddad had one. For years I thought the name of it was a “gerrinyabugger.”

With the chop saw I guess I could cut some 40mm x 100mm x 100mm blocks, and then cut each block down to two 19mm tiles or three 12mm tiles?

what’s it for? There’s a good chance they will move and crack even if you could make that cut and keep your fingers. Better off with plywood at that thickness.

What’s a percussion screwdriver?

Impact Driver.

https://youtu.be/O9syKDhdUos%5B/quote%5D

There isn’t really a DIY option to get 10mm tiles from a 40mm thick board.

Can you take them to a local mill and pay them to slice them? Once that’s done, a table saw would give you the most repeatable results if you want the sizes bang on.

They’re for summink wot is gonna look pretty..
Practicality is not the highest priority

An artisan style floor in a small space with very light footfall.. I’m gonna be glueing them down onto some thick marine ply, polishing and sealing with yacht varnish

You don’t reckon that I could slice them myself maybe DD? Each bit of board is only 1000mm max

I would take them to a timber mill to get them cut to 100mm wide and sliced to thickness i.e. bandsaw, but they’d really need planing for a decent finish – you’d struggle to sand them enough to look good from a sawn finish.
Chances of doing this with hire / DIY kit and retaining all your fingers is slim and it’ll make helluva lot of sawdust.

Yep, impact driver, absolute miracle of modern science 🙂

How flat do you need the result? If it is not required to be perfect you could half the thickness on a table saw or a band saw but because there is no clean datum on the board as you want to keep the patternation there may be some variation.

If it’s condemmed scaffolding, could it have embedded grit and sand? Just asking.

PS – I remember a Yankee screwdriver, too.

I reckon at a pinch you could do it all with a table saw* so long as it’s got a sled to rest the long face against to make the shorter cuts, without that there’s a good possibility of losing control of the board, which could be very bad.

I’d split all the boards lengthways to get the 12mm thickness (I reckon you’ll only get two useable from your original 40mm), then cut them to 100mm width (at this point you should have 1000x100x12mm planks) then make the final cuts to get them 100×100 squares. If the table saw has a sled then i’d use that otherwise i’d move over to a chop saw.

* Despite the request in the thread title IANAC and would defer to DD’s opinion.

Impact Driver.

Aha. Thank you.

Pretty and rustic?

A Froe would get you to 10mm +/- 5mm

Ifthe boards are straight…

I can’t see how you’d slice them myself yunki. Only way would be with a table saw – but with a blade set to 100mm depth and trying to keep the board square with ten mm between the fence and blade? Best if luck with that – I wouldn’t be trying it. 😯
Table saws are awesome but they’ll eat you for breakfast when stuff goes wrong.

A mill is your best best. As painful as that seems.

slowoldgit – Member
If it’s condemmed scaffolding, could it have embedded grit and sand? Just asking.

That would be my concern. A lot of places will not cut up reclaimed timber as the inevitable embedded nails and grit nadger the tooling.

I’d say a bandsaw. Rip them to the 100mm width, then rip each board to your 12mm, then crosscut to length. They won’t be perfect.

An artisan style floor in a small space with very light footfall.. I’m gonna be glueing them down onto some thick marine ply, polishing and sealing with yacht varnish

Gluing down solid timber basically goes against all advice for solid timber construction. It moves. If it isn’t allowed to move it’ll crack, bow or buckle.
Sometimes this won’t matter too much and Lord knows I’ve ignored the principles in my time 😳 but it’s good advice.

You may get away with it, may not. At that thickness who knows.

When I did the solid shingles on my shed, they were no more than 6mm thick with a single nail central to allow movement, but they still all buckled up and cracked. I didn’t mind that as it was outside on a shed, but I’d imagine you wouldn’t want that on a floor. Bathroom/toilet floor?

Wow, a Yankee. That’s a blast from the past, my Dad had one of those…

I still use my Yankee’s quite often.

There is nothing better for teasing out 100 year old, partially stripped screws.
When fully extended it’s so long that you can apply torque in such gentle increments that it makes it easy.

How about, cut down the planks to 50mm wide x 40mm thick strips, then chop those in half to get something close to 50mm wide x 15mm thick. You could do that on a table saw no drame. Then run them through a planer to tidy up the surfaces, last cut to 100mm lengths. Then do parquet with whatever rubbery glue is used for parquet these days.

cut down the planks to 50mm wide x 40mm thick strips, then chop those in half to get something close to 50mm wide x 15mm thick. You could do that on a table saw no drama

So a 50mm x 50mm tile is a more realistic proposition
(if I wanted to keep the tiles square)?

I can work with that

I can’t see how you’d slice them myself yunki. Only way would be with a table saw – but with a blade set to 100mm depth and trying to keep the board square with ten mm between the fence and blade? Best if luck with that – I wouldn’t be trying it.
Table saws are awesome but they’ll eat you for breakfast when stuff goes wrong.

+1.
Agree you need to take it to a pro to get the dimensions you want from the stock you’ve got.

If it were me I’d cut the scaff boards into 100mm wide strips using a table saw, then split them down the middle on a bandsaw.
You can then chop the stock down into 100mm lengths.