A local builder/friend has offered a drum sander(he has two), so I will give it a whirl...pun intended:laughing:
I'm almost half way, should finish the whole house including the 200sq ft loft this weekend. When we bought the flooring, the guy said he had about 2900-3000 sq ft left. Once loaded, he measurements and calculated the bundles and said there was 4,000 on the trailer/truck. We all looked at each other, then he said...how about $1500? We agreed thinking that he was overestimating a bit. Well, it looks like I am going to get a thousand feet down and looking at the bundles I bet I will have used one quarter of all the wood....so his guess-ta-ment was pretty darn close. And that includes about 10% in the discard pile that was too damaged to use.
So far so good, measuring to the opposite wall I am running about a quarter inch off at the most in any place over the 36' length. I did get into trouble about 2' off the wall while 45-ing around the stove flue in the corner. A river rock hearth is going in the corner, so no need to plank the whole corner. As the floor went further and further out cut on the 45 degree & it being unsupported when nailing, it began to hook. I caught it before it was out of control, knocked back some of the planks and face screwed them. After about 4 rows the hook went away, and all of that will be under the rock hearth...no harm done.