So just renovated my pine floor in living room (sanded and clear satin varnish) and the Mrs wants to fill the gaps between the planks.

As most are tongue and groove the gaps are not drafty but she doesn’t want them filling up with stuff.

There is some Bona Gap filler at about £10 per tube but is this much different from chaulk or even silicon sealant?

What other options are there and what have people found works best?

Cheers!

Cork

Thanks hammyuk- do you just stuff it in?

The propriatory stuff is quote expensive if you have a whole floor to fill in as I did. I just taped either side of all the gaps and pushed normal wood filler in. It’s held up fine through 5 years of constant use.

Basically – comes in rolls over differing widths, etc.
Can be sanded, removed, stained.

You can buy wood slivers which are tapered, you tap them in and then shave / sand off the excess.

The old school fix was sawdust/pva mix and then spread into the gaps. Always seemed to do the job…

Pine slivers here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLOORBOARD-SLIVERS-SMALL-TO-LARGE-GAP-FILLER-FOR-WOOD-FLOORS-RECLAIMED-PINE-/172955876348

paper mache will do the job as well.

pine floors expand and contract considerably with the seasons, if your gaps are not clean through to the space below I would leave it. I have a top floor laid with no gaps it is a nightmare for noise creaking and groaning as you walk because its pushing against each plank, they need to move a little imo.

I tried the sawduct and PVA method, the mixture dried dark grey so it was not at all successful!

Traditional caulk used to fill the gaps in planking on ships was hemp rope, AFAIK, so getting hold of a roll and tapping it down into the gap with a piece of hardwood and trimming the ends would seal the gaps, allow for expansion and contraction of the boards, stop stuff from getting into the gaps, but allow for planks to be removed in the future and then sealed again easily.
http://www.boat-building.org/learn-skills/index.php/en/wood/caulking-2/
There’s also synthetic caulk that you apply with a gun like tile sealing, or just use ordinary silicon sealant.
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/caulk-paneling-27416.html

Screwfix do a gap filler, worked well for me and pretty cheap:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-wood-flooring-sealant-oak-310ml/50081

Hemp rope is an option I hadn’t considered. I’ll look into that cheers

Gap filler and then brush sawdust over it, just rub along the joint with your finge.

I tend to leave the gaps as boards do move.

I redid my wood floors recently. The previous glue/sawdust was no good, so used the bona gap filler. So far 6 months on it still works very well. Worth the money in my opinion.

Tell her to use a Hoover

As the flooring is tongue and groove, i imagine that the depth of each seam is no more than 8mm or thereabouts, so if you want to fill with either splines or caulking cotton ( hemp rope will be too coarse, fine for the wooden ships where oak planks were 4″ to 8″ thick), you’ll find that the seams are too open and shallow and you’ll need to use an adhesive to keep them in situ. You could form a v-profile caulking seam with a router, which will give you a bit more depth and a wedge shape to ram home the splines and cotton. This will be very time consuming and getting the profile near the skirting boards will need to be done by chisel as the router base plate will get in the way.

Effectively you’ll be preventing the natural pine from expanding and contracting if you plug the seams rigidly and something somewhere will split or rise.

In my opinion, not a good look.

Cork strips could work as they have some give, however, a flexible adhesive will be needed to keep them in place too.

Personally, I’d go for a flexible seam filler, such as Sikaflex 291. A contrasting black could work against the freshly sanded and clear coats boards? As suggested above, masking tape set a couple of mm from the edges of the seams, gun in the sikaflex and allow to partially cure before trimming off the excess with a sharp chisel.

Alternatively, lift the floor boards and re-lay using floor clamps or straps and use a new board against the wall you won’t see much of or mess about with shades of stain to get a decent colour match.

I am, among many other things, a time served wooden boatbuilder. 🙂

If I had just sanded and varnished & then the gaps where pointed out to me, I’d tell my missus to jog on …..:-)

Cheers slackalice, I’ll look at the Sikaflex. I think a seam filler is my only option on reflection as the gaps are irregular.

If it were me I’d leave them but for the sake of a quieter life I’ll do as she requests!

We don’t have t&g boards, but this stuff has been good for us.

https://www.draughtex.co.uk