Thought I would post a couple of pics and my tips for others contemplating building their own hardwood flooring.  I have only prepped about 300bdft, which is nothing in comparison to Frenchy, but I thought this might be of help to others.

1.  I chose Jatoba, but am learning the difficulties of working with this wood.  Choose carefully based on the equipment you have.  I am now contemplating a small wide belt for the next batch.

2.  I cannot imagine prepping the stock without a power feeder.  It was a huge asset.

3.  If you decide to use the traditional 3/4″ thickness, the biggest part of the job is prepping to thickness.  The 300bd ft is shown in one pic, and one of the five 45gal drums of shavings to get to correct thickness is shown in the other.  It took me about 7hrs to mill from 4/4 to 3/4″ after fussing about with tearout issues for a couple of hours.

4.  The T/G portion of the work is the easy part so long as you have a shaper and power feeder.

5.  In the end I will save a lot of $ on the stock, but if I was not planning other projects with the tools I would have been lucky to break even.

Food for thought for other nutty people like me.

Brad