Can you use the Rustic planer head to recondition an old floor ?

[batmanrobin]

I have a man that asked about redoing his floors in an old log cabin that has been worn down to almost smooth. He would like to reproduce the wavy effect that it once had years ago.
You can buy new flooring with that effect but he would like to use what he has.  Anyone here use this head and what kind of results did you have.  Thanks

 

[VictorL]

That's possible in theory.  But boards must be free of nails. How many square feet we are talking about? That's fine for small project, but 2000 sq ft will be too much.

Good luck!
VictorL

 

[batmanrobin]

I have not actually seen the cabin yet but its small, appr 600 sq ft. He says its in good condition for age but worn from years of use.

 

[AlexThePalex]

The rustic head won't make this floor as it used to be. It will make it wavy allright, but smooth waves and not the effect of rough wood. For that effect you need something like Festool's Rustofix machine, it's a machine with a metal wire brush that will bring out the original woodgrain effect again. Unfortunately it is NAINA. Maybe you can reproduce the same effect with a smiliar American machine or a large angle grinder with a wire brush.

But as Victor said, if you want to use the rustic head on the planer, your workpiece got to be free of nails or you can say bye bye to your rustic head in a minute.

 

[tbellemare]

It's common around here to distress floors and beams with the HL 850 and the Rustic Head.

Kreg did it to a fireplace mantel and there's a thread on here about it.

Tom

 

[batmanrobin]

First of all thanks for all the responses!    Just from my initial conversation with him, I started talking Festool  and that led to his log cabin and the floor. If you look at the Rustic Undulating head on page 103 of the Festool catalog it shows the pattern I think he might want.  Have you used that one before  I hope to get more info from him soon.  Thanks again

 

[tbellemare]

The Undulating Head, 485331, is the one generally used for random, distressed look but I have sold the wavy ones for distressing also.

Tom

 

[WarnerConstCo.]

It would beat the heck out of hand scraping it.