Custom Hand Scraped Dyed & Stained Solid Hickory Plank Flooring

          For centuries, anything made from wood (including flooring) had to be shaped by hand. Smoothing or final cutting of the face was accomplished by one or another of the hand tools specially designed for this purpose such as an adz, knife, plane or scraper. The blades or cutting edges of these surfacing tools were often sharpened to razor-like keenness then a burr or rolled edge applied in many cases to the business end (or edge) to improve cutting efficiency.

          When I was a pup, we tried very hard to make each movement of the scraper blade such as to minimized our start and stop marks. Acceptance of these marks might be compared to the acceptance of stop or start marks from sanding machines like the drum sander or spinner (edger) in the sanding trade. We left each board’s surface smooth and even. The idea was to create a floor surface as flat and plumb as humanly possible given the limitations of our tools and our skill. Smoothness meant wear ability and durability and in the end, more pleasing to the eye.

          Over the years, I’ve openly shared my knowledge and skill in the fine art of my craft with many thousands of wood flooring mechanics around the world. I’ve worked with apprentices & master craftsmen in all aspects of my trade on the job, in the classroom and through books, videos/DVDs, as well as in numerous technical trade publications and consumer articles. On a few occasions, I’ve even schooled interested students in the rare art of fabricating tools, sharpening them and applying them to the job of smooth scraping wooden flooring.
          Precious few of those I’ve trained in that discipline chose to follow it in its purest form. Virtually all elected instead to apply what they’d learned from smooth scraping to develop their skills in sculpting the face of wooden flooring. Sculpting or contoured scraping is intended to replicate wear. The ever increasing demand for this authentic distressing lured them away. Contour or textured scraping is all the rage these days. Nowadays it seems almost no one knows the meaning, much less the methodology of smooth scraping a wooden plank or a wooden floor.
          The tools of the trade and techniques for expertly simulating genuine wear are similar in many aspects to smooth scraping. The single biggest difference is the use of contoured scrapers and molding devices to groove and roll over the stock, lifting out patches and pockets of grain rather than level them. Some even employee mechanized cutting devices and abrasives to accelerate and balance their techniques.
          Replicating worn or distressed flooring takes practice and skill as well, but more brute force is employed than with smooth scraping therefore the use of mechanized tools is often employed.
          As it turns out, most manufacturers of so called “hand scraped” wooden flooring utilize machines or even sanding devices to create their “hand scraped” products thereby reducing their to market costs.
          Frankly, it doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot how they “sculpt” their flooring, whether by hand or by machine. Unless they use “skilled artisans” who apply their knowledge and feel for the wood, the outcome, over time, will be the same.

          Properly carving the face of a board takes experience and a feel for the texture and grain of the wood. Each piece is unique. The flow of the grain determines the best way for surfacing it. Contouring the face by “relieving” the softer “early growth” while leaving the harder “late growth” takes skill and resolve. Randomly gouging and distressing the face of a board involves brute force but precious little aptitude.
          Except for a machine’s difficulty replicating a natural wear pattern, they could be employed entirely in place of hand scraping for factory distressing most styles of wooden flooring.
          You might be wondering, what possible difference it could make. If it’s a whole lot less expensive with machines, why not? The real reason is with wear. The ultimate task of any floor should be to support its traffic and stand up over time with a modicum of good looks. And there’s the stinger. Most inexpensive machine made products and many of the hand distressed flooring products can look painfully shabby, even worn out after only a few years.
          Why is this? Over time, all natural materials wear according to their relative toughness. With wood, it is their grain direction and type that determines this. Planks or pieces fashioned skillfully according to their grain or relative toughness will age more naturally than those randomly or mechanically distressed.
          Many purchasers of hand scraped wooden flooring products do so expecting them to show wear or traffic less than smooth-faced items. Unfortunately, mechanically or randomly scraped wooden flooring usually looks severely worn far more quickly than sanded or smooth faced traditionally finished flooring. In fact, most inexpensive and some even relatively pricey hand scraped products can look damaged and dull, worn out before their time (or at least extremely unattractive prematurely) -- especially when compared to most other solid wooden flooring types.
          Smooth scraped wooden floors look rather similar to smooth sanded floors when they're initially installed and finished.  It takes a practiced eye and often some strong glare lighting to bring out the “shape” of pieces or planks that have been smooth scraped, particularly on sample boards. Large rooms and those with floor-to-ceiling windows or broad indirect lighting accentuate the subtle texture of smooth scraped wooden flooring. Such rooms look distinctively classic and strikingly elegant with “smooth scraped” wooden flooring.
          Oil and wax is the method of choice for finishing smooth scraped or lightly textured hand scraped wooden flooring. Over time with medium foot traffic, those floors will continue to improve with age. Like an old leather couch or jacket or vintage hand loomed woolen sweater, smooth scraped wooden floors accrue in both appearance and worth in due time.


Don Bollinger