Santos Mahogany floors made to look rustic

[Walk On Wood]

I have a customer that asked me to rip out their existing Santos floors (that have absolutely nothing wrong with them) and replace them with a very trendy, engineered white oak product, that is handscraped and stained gray.  I asked them to allow me the opportunity to work on the Santos and see what I could do, this is the sample I made.  The left is the original floor, the two on the right are after beveling, handscraping, staining, and a sealer coat.

 

[Zacharytanner]

I like it

 

[bkharman]

I have a customer that asked me to rip out their existing Santos floors (that have absolutely nothing wrong with them) and replace them with a very trendy, engineered white oak product, that is handscraped and stained gray.  I asked them to allow me the opportunity to work on the Santos and see what I could do, this is the sample I made.  The left is the original floor, the two on the right are after beveling, handscraping, staining, and a sealer coat.

Have they seen the samples?  Curious to see what they say...  I really like the look and they can definitely say they were truly "hand scraped"

Cheers. Bryan.

 

[nickao]

Going from a  true 3/4"Santos Mahogany to an engineered flooring product is a HUGE downgrade, these people need to be educated.

You are doing right by saving the existing flooring and your samples look great!

 

[jacko9]

Nice job, what did the customers have to say?  Is there a cost difference to them between the two options?

Jack

 

[Walk On Wood]

Thanks for the commments. Unfortunately, my customers have decided to rip out the current floor and go with the engineered.  It is roughly triple the cost for the job, but I couldnt convince them of any other way.

The sample was indeed truly handscraped, using a combination of a hook scraper and a scrub plane. 

 

[bkharman]

Thanks for the commments. Unfortunately, my customers have decided to rip out the current floor and go with the engineered.  It is roughly triple the cost for the job, but I couldnt convince them of any other way.

The sample was indeed truly handscraped, using a combination of a hook scraper and a scrub plane. 

What a shame. You should pull the floor nice to recycle if you can. I am sure someone else would love that floor.

Good job mate.

 

[blk65brd]

Thanks for the commments. Unfortunately, my customers have decided to rip out the current floor and go with the engineered.  It is roughly triple the cost for the job, but I couldnt convince them of any other way.

The sample was indeed truly handscraped, using a combination of a hook scraper and a scrub plane. 

Just curious, since you work with flooring considered the use of the rustic planer blades for the HL 850 planer to give it the "hand scraped" look?

 

[jacko9]

I hate waste, that's why I have two storage building full of "stuff" I'll probably never use [eek]

Jack

 

[Walk On Wood]

Thanks for the commments. Unfortunately, my customers have decided to rip out the current floor and go with the engineered.  It is roughly triple the cost for the job, but I couldnt convince them of any other way.

The sample was indeed truly handscraped, using a combination of a hook scraper and a scrub plane. 

Just curious, since you work with flooring considered the use of the rustic planer blades for the HL 850 planer to give it the "hand scraped" look?

I have the HL850 and all 3 rustic heads, but Im still not happy with the results i can get with it.  I find myself still handscraping after using it so that it doesn't look too consistent.  I also have a difficult time in selling somebody a handscraped floor that isn't scraped by hands.. It seems like false advertising to me.  There is also something very satisfying about using hand scrapers and hand planes. I love my Festool's, but there is nothing like awesome curls of wood coming off of a razor sharp plane.

 

[nickao]

Well thats your internal thought process, if you are using the Festool and then going back to fine tune it with a hand scraper for me that is a 100% hand scraped floor.

it's not like using that planer on 2500 sqft of flooring is automated and easy by any means. It's hand work. Your nose in down in the work, your hand eye coordination is constantly being used and you use  your sense of style to clean it up with the manual scraping.

Someone could say that its not hand scraped becasue the lumber yard cut and planed the pieces into flooring before it got to the job site. Sounds to me like you have the eye and care to use the machine and the scraper together to get the right look, thats all that matters for me, not how you got there, but the final results looking like someone did it in the 1800's is what should matter.

 

[es07Eric]

Well done!

 

[Walk On Wood]

Well thats your internal thought process, if you are using the Festool and then going back to fine tune it with a hand scraper for me that is a 100% hand scraped floor.

it's not like using that planer on 2500 sqft of flooring is automated and easy by any means. It's hand work. Your nose in down in the work, your hand eye coordination is constantly being used and you use  your sense of style to clean it up with the manual scraping.

Someone could say that its not hand scraped becasue the lumber yard cut and planed the pieces into flooring before it got to the job site. Sounds to me like you have the eye and care to use the machine and the scraper together to get the right look, thats all that matters for me, not how you got there, but the final results looking like someone did it in the 1800's is what should matter.

Thank you, very well said.  I guess that it comes down to how much I pride myself on my craftsmanship.  I see "handscraped" floors everyday that are obviously machine done.  I don't ever want one of my floors to look like that.  Im all for using every available tool to achieve the best possible result, so I'll practice with the 850 some more and then really put it into action.

 

[nickao]

Dont know how you do it, my back is long gone for that kind of work.

 

[Walk On Wood]

Here's another cool hand scraped sample I made.. 6" #1 common white oak, I used the 850 with undulating head, Veritas scrub plane, and a hook scraper

First pic is stained only, next two are with 2 coats of wb sealer, still wet

 

[pettyconstruction]

Great looking sample floor ,I agree,it looks out of the 1800's

 

[NL-mikkla]

Yep that's enough handscraped for me  [big grin]
Samples look great!!

So did the original floor btw, sorry that it has to go.
Like suggested, try to save some wood for future smaller floor/furniture projects.
I love reclaimed stuff!