I was busy in the morning, so I didn’t get started until 1:00pm. And then, I only had a few hours before a church meeting. Fortunately, Artie was around to help me, so we made some good progress.
With the subfloor in the van, we took the opportunity to mark up the sheets. First, we marked the centerline of the van, which we will use in the future for making sure other components are square. Second, we marked where the biscuit between the sheets of plywood will be placed (more on that later). Finally, we marked where the two sections of L-Track were going to be installed, because the L-Track I purchased is recessed, so I have to use a router to carve out the wood that the L-Track will sit in.
We pulled out the four sections of subfloor, one at a time, and trimmed and cut the biscuit holes. Only two of the four sections needed a little trimming, but it was very minor. The biscuit joint is a woodworking joint the will allow the sheets of plywood to sit flush with each other when they are glued end to end. My goal with using this method is to minimize any seam between the sections of plywood in my finished subfloor. I purchased a special tool to make the biscuit slots in the end of the board. Once it’s set up, its very easy to use. When we get to the day when we glue in the subfloor, I’ll put a #20 biscuit into each of these slots to mate the ends of the two pieces of plywood perfectly together. There will also be wood glue involved between the sheets. Here is a picture of the biscuit hole in the end of the plywood sheet and one picture of the biscuit in the hole.
The last half of my time today was spent alone and working on using the router to carve out the channel for the L-Track. I was a little nervous about messing up my subfloor by making a mistake with the router, so I measured this thing several times. I marked lines for the L-Track and the lines for where the guides for the router were to go. Here is a picture of the setup.
At first, I tried to take too deep of the cut into the wood, and the router expressed it’s angst to that approach. So, I had to make several shallow cuts to get to the 1/2″ deep groove that I needed. In addition, the router bit is only 1/2″ wide, but the L-Track slot has to be 1 1/4″ wide, so it will take three passes to cut the groove wide enough. Needless to say, that is taking quite a bit of time. And creating a fair amount of sawdust. I made it about half way through the first piece before I called it for the day. The rest I’ll do tomorrow.