I’ve owned a very old, and cheap at the time, Craftsman router table for about 5 years. A customer offered it to me in a package with two Dado blades for $20 - a deal I couldn’t pass up. Well, the Dado blades won’t fit my saw and I only had a round-over bit for the table, so the deal ended up seeing little use.
Then I decided to restore the floor on our 1955 home’s porch. It’s all 5/4 Cedar tongue and groove, so worth saving. I spent days chemical stripping 10 or more coats of paint off it, then half a day with a rented floor sander getting it smooth again…
Once the paint was stripped away it revealed several board ends that were too far gone to save. I cut them out with a small circular saw and a jig saw…
There were quite a few …
That shot above shows the need for a new skill. I was going to buy a length of Cedar T&G, but it was suggested on FB that I could mill it myself. Well, today was milling day. I started out with some leftover 1.75" thick pieces of an old Cedar sign. I cut then to 4" wide so I could rip them to 1" thick in 1 pass. I used an 80 tooth blade in my table saw…
Where I cut out rot, most need a tongue, but some need a groove. Starting with the grooved pieces first, I opted to just cut all the way to the bottom of the board. I used a straight cutting bit and a fence. One pass for the ‘groove’ and two passes with different height settings for the tongue. It took quite a few test tries, but I ended up with a usable product to make all the patches.
Not impressive by most woodworker’s standards, but for me on a really crappy table, I’m pretty happy that I was able to get it done.
