Floor boards star head screws, no screwdriver to fit

As someone who has employed many subbie plumbers in my time my first thought when I see damaged floors is what's there pipework like?
I've always used a circular saw (first one was a skil built like a tank) now 18v dewalt and a multi tool. We used to use a proper nail extractor on cut nails and lost heads ring shanks bit more challenging.
Modern glued floors are a f------- ing pain!
Plus any half decent installer should have torx bits with them plus bits for any other scew type they are likely to find.
 
JobAndKnock said:
But IMHO it's still the wrong tool, as was the jigsaw before it. A straight batten (pinned of screwed to the floor), a smallish circular saw (i.e 150 to 165mm) and learning how to plunge in to start a cut (admittedly pretty dangerous with a non-plunge saw if you don't know what you are doing) will do the major part of the job - a hand saw or a multitool will finish into the corners of the cuts. These days you can substitute a plunge saw and rail for the circular saw and batten. That way you get nice neat cuts...
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Ahh.. but one of the good things about the oscillating saw is that if you hit an old flooring brad that was hammered over, you don't end up ruining a £40(?) circular saw blade.
 
opps said:
I have never heard of them. Do they work without damaging the floor?.
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If it is the same implement I have in mind, they have narrow sharp jaws, like end nippers, but with an arm on the movable jaw. Some include a slide hammer, to force the jaws into the timber around the nail head, then as you lean the fixed arm down, the other movable arm forces the jaws to close tight on the nail. The harder you press, the greater the grip on the nail and the greater the pull applied to the nail to come out.

To answer your question - Yes there is some damage to the timber around the nail, but usually much less than using brute force to lift a board.
 
Pic of nail extractor
Position Jaws over nail head slide top section up and down smartly jaws go round nail head lever back.
Left with a recess that a screw head fits in nicely.
to refix board.
20220822_173440.jpg20220822_173429.jpg
 
opps said:
Ahh.. but one of the good things about the oscillating saw is that if you hit an old flooring brad that was hammered over, you don't end up ruining a £40(?) circular saw blade.
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Never heard of keeping an old blade for cutting flooring and/or using demolition/nail-proof blades (which aren't, really)? TBH you should take the fastenings out first, and "fubarring" the odd blade is part of the cost of doing such work.

One of the other things about oscillating saws is that they won't cut in a straight line for any distance...
 
JobAndKnock said:
Never heard of keeping an old blade for cutting flooring and/or using demolition/nail-proof blades (which aren't, really)? TBH you should take the fastenings out first, and "fubarring" the odd blade is part of the cost of doing such work.

One of the other things about oscillating saws is that they won't cut in a straight line for any distance...
Click to expand...

Although I have plunge attachment for my Festool Vecturo, I normally use my Fein because the boards are covered by carpet. I have a stock of aluminium door finger plates to use as a guide when cutting through floorboards.

That said, yup, I bow down to your superior knowledge. I may question your advice from time to time but that is often evidence of my naivety.

Yet again, thank you for taking the time to respond.
 
I get what you saw about the Vecturo (and it being a lot more powerful than many multitools) - I actually bought one on your recommendation - but multitools, (even Vecturos) cut very slowly in comparison to even fairly basic circular saws and even when guided it can be difficult to get a consistently plumb cut out of one I find, especially with lower cost blades.

In an ideal world you'd remove all the fastenings before cutting out a section of flooring. Reality, however, always seems to hide a screw or nail in the path of your blade, or worse still some joker in the past installed the floor with steel strip loose tongues joining the boards. I've had two full mill conversions like that; you wreck a lot of blades doing service cut-outs! These jobs often weren't finesse jobs, and required a really heavy plunging saw to do some of the cut outs on floors up to 60mm thick (Hilti WSC85 saw), so a bit different to the average run of the mill flooring cut-out
 
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