Thoughts on making your own shiplap?

[Erin]

I've got it in my head that I really want shiplap siding for our interior walls.  Called around to every lumber yard in a 100 mile radius and no one carries shiplap!  (The kid at Mendards couldn't even figure out what I was talking about.  ) 
Why is shiplap not around??

More importantly, is there a way to make my own?  I don't have my router in a table, but I suppose I could if needs be.  Or is this something for a dado blade in my table saw?  Is there another method I'm not thinking of...?

Or should I just skip the extra work and go with carsiding/T&G instead?

[Ndrmyr]

I have seen shiplap siding, but never in a big box home improvement store.  It is a simpler/cruder profile and simply is a low enough volume item that the big boxes don't carry it.  You will have to find a smaller lumberyard and I know for a fact it can be ordered since I have considered it in the past.  It is the simplest of profiles to make DIY and a tablesaw with a dado blade can make it pretty easily.  If I was doing a lot, I might want a power feeder, but it is within reach of a DIYer.  That being said, if you paid a lumberyard to put the profile on, I'm not sure that you would save a lot of money over a w4p profile which is what you probably are thinking of in tongue and groove.  A shiplap is just reversed rabbit joint on edge edge.  Still, it takes as much feeding time as a more complicated profile on a shaper or router table.

[Don_P]

For a shiplap I think I'd prefer just an edge guide on a handheld router. The downside as compared to t&g is the exposed fastener.

[muldoon]

Erin, I also wanted shiplap, and was going to use a dado on a tablesaw to make it using the cedar boards I can get from a local mill.  After some experimentation, I ended up putting a 45 degree bevel on top and bottom edges and sliding them in that way.  I have black felt paper behind the cedar in the event one got crazy with expansion and a gap was visible.  

It is visibly rustic, but my place is rustic so it sorta works.  

[glenn kangiser]

I tried the router and it works but makes lots of shavings and I burned up a couple of heavy duty routers.

I like to take a skill saw or even two, with one set for each cut, and cut about 7/8 deep in the center of the edge if the wood is wet (considering 12" wide) then set another skill saw for about 3/8 inch deep and cut a strip off of the edges on opposite sides.  Makes decent shiplap relatively fast.  I use the rip guides on the skill saws to maintain width.

[Erin]

Glen, I'm trying to picture this.  
Do you mean a handheld circular saw??  (Because truth be told, my mental image of me trying to cut 3/4" width, in half, is a bit daunting...) 
I'll bet I could set something up with my table saw though to do something similar...
Though I'll admit, that was my first thought with a router is that I'd burn it out.  And I have an el cheapo... It'd go pretty fast.  
And I'm doing post and beam, Don.  My fasteners will be hidden by the front sides of my posts.  
But when I do have exposed nails, I'm thinking something like this:
 
http://store.tremontnail.com/cgi-bin/tremontnail/items?mv_arg=6

Ndrmyr, I called every lumber yard in about 100 miles.  No one carries shiplap.  No one could GET shiplap.  The closest I found was drop siding, which I don't want because of the large reveal between the boards.  And considering the fact that Menards carries any other profile you can think of, I was really surprised that they don't have shiplap!

muldoon, that is a slick idea.  That has now officially become Plan B.

[glenn kangiser]

Erin, You will find that the handheld circular saw with a rip guide is easier to use than a table saw.  The boards are long and unwieldy. I make a jig to hold the boards on edge then set the rip guide at about 3/8 or 1/2 the width of the board including the kerf.  Wet wood use 7/8 inch per foot of width.  Dry wood can be less.

Second cut is with the board lying flat.  Take a circular saw set about 3/8 deep or a bit less than center to cut the strip from the edge then flip the board over and cut the opposite half of the shiplap on the other side of the board.  This is by far the best way I have found.  I made a lot of it for my cabin.  If you want a bevel a block plane would do that pretty quickly or your router.

[glenn kangiser]

The Square nails are available through Do-It Best as hardened masonry nails though some of the stores may have to order them.  Out local store stocks some of them for me and others who want them to replicate the look form the Gold Mining days.  1890 they quit using them except the cut nails are still made on the same machines for hardening for masonry nail purposes.  Wire nails do not have enough carbon to harden in most cases except those made for masonry purposes.

[Erin]

I see it now!  The jig.  That's the part that was missing from my picture. 
(And yeah, I was trying to figure out how to manhandle long 1x in a table saw, carefully enough to get a good cut, as well as avoiding injuring myself! lol)

I'm going to give this a try and see what happens.  Thanks!   

[glenn kangiser]

Use the rip guide for both cuts.  You may find it easiest to cut slots in both edges first and stack them up then reset the guide and depth for the other cuts doing them all in the second process if you only have one saw.  I have two so set one for each.

[davidj]

I made a bunch of shiplap over the Summer for vertical use in our place.  Here is where I describe it.

Basically I ended up using a large portable table saw, a good dado blade and lots of clamps and feather boards.  Failed approaches included getting it milled (they got it wrong), a cheap dado blade (really scruffy cut) and the router (too slow).

If you do use the table saw, I think it's okay to use feather boards before and after the blade.  You don't want to do this with regular cuts, but it's okay if you're doing a rabbet, and this helped a lot with 14ft boards.  I also put extra clamps on the fence as it tended to drift after a few hundred feet of board.  Basically every clamp I had was holding something down on the table saw by the time I'd finished, which basically removed pretty much all skill from it.  Which means you don't make any mistakes and you can feed stuff through quickly.

I think I was getting through nearly 500 linear ft of board an hour by the end working by myself. However, this was after a lot of time spent messing around with things that didn't work well, so it ended up being quite time consuming from start to finish.

[twobritts]

Erin -  Your Menards can get you shiplap,  the person you talked to probably doesn't know much about it because no one asks for it.  I used to be a building materials manager at a menards store.  If you can't find it,  get in touch with me and I can have a friend at the store here pass the information along to the store near you.  Its something done through outside vendors and not something that everyone at the desk knows how to handle. 

[Don_P]

For jigs; I've also taken a sheet of plywood and scraps and made 16' of table that was over the tablesaw, that helps with the balancing. Raise the running blade up through the plywood table and then use drywall screws or clamps to mount a long 2x4 fence, featherboards, etc to that big worksurface. Craftsman used to make a molding head and a pretty wide selection of knives that fit a tablesaw. For T&G I've used a large workbench and my big router but that thing is 3.5 hp.

[OlJarhead]

Do you have any portable saw millers around?  Do a search online you might find one.

I was going to make shiplap using a dado blade on my table saw but changed my mind and went with T&G instead -- which I made and am making myself.  We've done 3 full walls and two walls about 1/3 each all on the same bits and router.

I'm finding that with Pine it's not too bad if you plane it first and adjust the blade darn near perfectly.

[Erin]

Do you have any portable saw millers around?  Do a search online you might find one.

lol
Check my location. 
We don't even have stationary saw mills. 

twobritts, I've discovered the kid manning the phone (whichever one it happens to be for the day) at Menards' builder's desk often doesn't know what he has. 
I called about 2x6 T&G one time.  He told me they don't carry it.  I told him, "Look behind you on the west wall.  I think it's C6."

"Oh.  That stuff." 


When I get one of the grownups at the builder's desk, I'm usually fine.