Hand-Scraped Flooring?
It’s funny how we spend a lot of money to make our floors glass-smooth. Tile, laminate flooring, and prefinished hardwood are at the top of the list. And for those of us with 100-year old hardwood floors, we spend a lot of time sanding and refinishing to get a smooth surface for our stocking feet.
Well, as proof that what goes around comes around and that history repeats itself, HomerWood® Hardwood Flooring (a subsidiary of Armstrong World Industries, the vinyl flooring manufacturer) has come out with a line of “hand-scraped” hardwood flooring. Yep. Hand-scraped. By humans. The Amish, as a matter of fact. They’re calling this new line of flooring the Amish Hand-Scraped™ Collection. Now, I don’t know what HomerWood is charging for this flooring, but I bet it isn’t inexpensive. And apparently there’s a segment of our population that is willing to spend the money for a “hand-tooled” finish.
Personally, I think they misnamed it. Why? Because in the photo on this page, the Amish man is using a hand plane (looks like a No. 4). And in the photo on this page, another Amish man is using a drawknife. A drawknife?! Neither of which can be called a “scraper.” When I think of a scraper, I think of a Stanley 112 or at least a No. 74. Or the modern Lie-Nielsen Large Scraping Plane or the Veritas® Scraping Plane.
In any case, I think “Hand-Tooled” might have been a better name. Maybe we ought to offer to go teach the marketing folks at HomerWood a little about hand tools.