Flooring Slip Tongue – Important Facts To Know Before You Buy

If you are installing a hardwood floor, you will need to use hardwood slip tongue. Slip tongue is nothing more than a sliver of wood used to connect to separate pieces of wood where they join together. For example if you are laying floor in two directions, eventually they will need some way to connect – that is where slip tongue is used!

Before you begin to lay your wooden floor, you should prepare everything you’ll need. And one of those things is a strip of hardwood spline. Here are some thing you need to know about and should consider with hardwood spline:

Consider How Much You’ll Need: It’s worth preparing in advance how much flooring slip-tongue you need before you begin laying the hardwood floor panels. There’s nothing worse than getting started on a project and having to stop halfway through because you don’t have everything you need. If you don’t have any slip tongue, then you’ll have to halt any progress as soon as you need to change the direction of the wood.

Size Requirements… most hardwood slip tongue used today is 3/4 inch, but just to be safe, make sure you measure for correct size. Once you are sure of the right size go ahead and place your order. The worse thing is to order the wrong size – that will stop your flooring installation dead in its tracks! It is a real pain, but if you get stuck and only need a piece or two you can try cutting the piece yourself.

Make Sure You Order The Right Size: Obviously, you must have the right thickness of hardwood slip tongue to do the job. While hardwood floors do come in may different sizes, so does spline. Having said that, most hardwood floors installed today use 3/4 inch spline.

Again, there’s nothing worse than being halfway though laying the floor then realizing you have to stop because the slip tongue is too thin or thick. So as well as getting the appropriate length of hardwood slip tongue, be sure to get the correct thickness. If you don’t want to buy the slip tongue of the specific thickness, you can always cut a piece of hardwood yourself to the appropriate length and thickness.

Bottom line? If you want your new hardwood floor to look great and flow seamlessly between rooms, you will need hardwood slip tongue made from poplar because poplar takes nails much better than oak.

Finally, make sure you buy quality – poplar, not oak. Poplar is far easier to nail. Also make sure each piece of slip tongue is double end trimmed to eliminate end checks and problem splits. Also remember buying from the manufacturer typically means better prices and better quality.