I just installed 300 sq. ft. of Harto Armstrong/Bruce 2 1/4 butterscotch. I am not sure what stip style it was but it was a battle all day long. Many variations in width and the milling on the end joints was brutal. Many of the ends were not even close to square. I've installed lots of Bruce and usually have a small percentage of poorly milled boards. This seemed to be over what I would consider an acceptable percentage of defective boards. Not to mention the lengths were not great either: decent amount of 5 and 6 footers but tons of 1-2.5 footers really had to be conscious on the rackout.

Most floors I need to breakout the wedges and screw them to the subfloor 2 or 3 times to persuade stubborn warped boards. We must have used them atleast once every two rows with this stuff.

Anybody have a similar experience with this stuff.

Seemed like this stuff had a microbevel on the long edge and no bevel on the ends.

Customer purchased it at Lowes.

Anybody know what strip it is?

Lowe's has a proprietary name with Bruce products but that sounds similar to Dundee or Bristol strip. What you describe is par for the course with Bruce such as bowed boards, different widths, and shorts.

Having said that I am used to it and can make it work fine. You should have stopped this job and made a phone call instead of continuing. If you would take a speed square or framing square and check the butt joints you may find that that most are cut square.

There is a different technique an installer has to use to install badly bowed boards so the butt joints will meet up tight and square.

Check that squareness issue out for us with boards already installed and appear to have a mis cut for squareness. Don't take this post as being critical.... just trying to see what is going on here.

I think I know what you are saying. If there is even a slight bow in the board it will translate into a gap at the back or the front of the end joint. (or if your initial row isn't straight you'll have poor end joints.) Believe me we do whatever is neccessary to get the bows out or we pull the board.

But you are correct many times when you get the bow out, the end gap is corrected but with this floor MANY of the end cuts were actually not cut square this I confirmed with a speed square but rarely needed to because many were cut so poorly that it was obvious by just looking at them. Believe me, I was shocked after about the 8th board that I checked with a speed square I thought I must be grabbing the same board over and over again but I wasn't. Of course even the defective boards could be salvaged to either start of finish rows depending on which end was not square.

Having said that most of the really bad cuts seemed to be confined to 3 or 4 boxes and as the job progressed the quality did seem to improve.

I believe what you're saying Mschell... makes for one nightmare of a job. Been there myself. That's the reason I carry a router table to most jobs, cut off ends and re-groove/ and or spline.

wasn't bad enough to come to that but it definitely required a lot more time than it should have to get everything perfect.