This is a floor I did. It's solid 3/4" x 6" American Black Walnut #1 common that was scraped. We glued and nailed it. Then stained and finished it with Waterlox. It was quite expensive at $90,000.00 for 4500 ft. plus stairs. These photos aren't the best but give you an idea of what the floors look like.

I like it Gary. Did you scrape it yourself?

4500' ? Gary and what army? Well, I guess he could have had it scraped.

Awesome install Gary.

That hand-scraped look is all the rage right now, in our area. I know that this is very trendy, much like all the pastel colours we did in the past.
Wondering how to heck to approach the pricing of re-sanding them when the time comes, and the time WILL come. Probably after the next two - three years.

Naw, I didn't do the scraping, except on some stair parts. The distributor sends the flooring down to somewhere in L.A. where it's done. I'm pretty sure they use some sort of hand held power tool.

Yeah, I got mixed feelings on these scraped floors. In the right setting, I think they look fine. But Dennis is correct about pricing the refinishing down the road. At some point, the fad will wear off and folks will be like, " What in the world was I thinking?". We saw it with the white and pastel floors, we've seen it with ugly colors on floors of all types. That's why when someone asks my opinion, I tell them to get a plain N. American hardwood in a strip or plank finished in a natural color. I haven't had to re-coat or re-sand one yet. I'll not be the guinea pig. I wait till someone else does one and pick up some pointers

[quote="Gary"]Naw, I didn't do the scraping, except on some stair parts. The distributor sends the flooring down to somewhere in L.A. where it's done. I'm pretty sure they use some sort of hand held power tool.

There's 2 main places in L.A. . Huge warehouse sweat shops. They use hand power planers, with custom made blade profiles, and different profile hand scrapers for edges and detail ,( pillowing & smoothing out the face ). Then ofcoarse there's Anderson, IMO started up the rage, all their distressing is done by some huge prison in the south. They use all hand tools.

That's what I've done. I took a $100.00 Hitachi that has steel blades, and I ground one into curve. I then set the other one ( it's a two bladed hand help power planner ) real low, so as not to get in the way but still balance the planner head. With the easily adjustable depth knob on the front, I could adjust how wide or narrow the "scrape" was/is. Running it slow produced a smooth scrape, whereas pushing it quickly over the wood produced a little "chatter". I'd just run it randomly, this way and that, and start and stop at various spots. It looked fine to me. Then I sanded it a bit with a 5" ROS and 100. I did all the treads this way and everyone loved them.

Years back I had this brite idea that I could make money setting up production for scraping, and pump it out, without the manpower. I found an old time knife grinder and sat down with him and designed a pattern for my industrial thickness planer ,( dont have anymore ). But same concept. It was a 3 blade 15" planer, and he ground the knives all perfectly the same ( for balance). I did like you mentioned, I was able to slow it down, control the depth, and could slightly push the boards from side to side, for some curve. I did this after running the boards through a tricked out molder, for pillowing edges.

Unfortunately , how hard and long I tried, it always looked mechanical, never natural. Finally walked from it. I think you can use power, like you mentioned, but the "hand power", know what I mean? More control to create natural art.

I don't like the repetitive look of many hand scraped floors, especially in laminates. I guess there must be someone with a machine out there. Plus like the one Gary did here...I think the gouges are too deep. On old original floors that were handscraped...didn't they try to achieve flatness?

Oh yeah, I'm sure way back when floors were hand scraped, they weren't trying to make them look scraped but flat and smooth. But since folks today have to pay extra for scraped floors, I think the idea is they want to see the scraping. Then it got to the point where the "scraping" was supposed to look like real old floors that are worn out from years of use. But they don't. Nope, they have morphed into a completely new look, and hardly what these guys were trying to achieve.

The type of scraping has gotten out of control IMO. What cracks me up is the nosings ( scraping on the length ), who walks that direction ? But that's what people want. For that matter who walks against the wall ?
But, thank goodness times have changed since that picture!!
You can just hear those guys talking..."This is BS, there's gotta be an easier way to make a buck !"

Hey, thats me on the left, lol