What is this thing? It doesn't have a proper name, only a function: cutting grooves to make a strip floor look like a beveled plank floor. It helped its owner Greg Warren of Greg Warren Inc., then based in California, win contracts in Southern California for strip-to-plank floors—sometimes referred to as peg and groove, a trendy style from the 1960s to the 1980s. He won contracts because the specially crafted six-tooth circular saw could do the job quicker and for less money than other contractors who were charging homeowners to groove by hand. "There were only a few companies that had this equipment, but I grooved for other contractors as well as my own floors," he says. He bought it from a supplier in Los Angeles that had a machinist on staff who made them in his garage. "I never lend it out. It's very fragile and it's real work to find replacement parts," Warren says. The groove process starts by routing a straight line in a piece of strip flooring. The saw is fixed to a metal plate with two wheels behind and two V-shaped wheels parallel to the blade that fit inside the router cut. Warren simply rolls the saw blade forward, and voila. Sure beats hand-beveling.
