This issue’s trick comes from Steve Bumpus at Simsbury, Conn.-based Farmington Valley Flooring:
For those times when you get a board you can’t pull in tight with a screwdriver or a Powernail Powerjack, we came up with this trick. It creates so much pressure, it can even take a bent board and make it straight, and it really comes in handy when we are working on 200-year-old floors we need to pull tight. We take a board 1 foot or 1½ feet long and cut it on a slide angle, then screw down half of it to the subfloor. The other piece’s groove locks into the tongue of the board we are nailing and pushes it tight as we tap the sliding board in with the mallet. Once we have the board we’re installing held tight where we want it, we screw it down with a 2-inch trim head screw on the end and the side—that’s enough to to keep it locked in while we’re nailing, but it will allow the board to move a little when it needs to over its lifespan.
See a collection of previous job-site tips on our Pinterest Trick of the Trade board. Do you have a Trick of the Trade to share? Email it to WFB. If we use it, we'll send you a WFB T-shirt.
