Hand Scraped Wood Floors – are they popular?

Prefinished Hand Scraped Hardwood Flooring has become extremely popular over the last several years. (Anderson Hand Scraped and Homerwood Hand Scraped). Homeowners love the “Old Worn Look” that this wood flooring imitates and want this unique look in their homes. Hand scraped wood flooring offers a distinct appearance, similar to the old worn look of floors found in old farmhouses, rustic estates and European castles. Years ago, it was very difficult to find skilled flooring contractors who were able to duplicate the look of hand scraped hardwood flooring.

Over the years, customers who were looking to replace their floors or add wood flooring, asked us to duplicate the look of their old, distressed, hand scraped floor boards. In 1939 Hosking Hardwood Flooring developed our own system for antiquing and hand scraping new flooring to look like old flooring. My father, Thomas Hosking, developed different metal base plates, each having a different set of unique metal imprints (protrusions), so that when positioned on sections of the installed floor and hit with a 10 lb. hammer they imprinted dents and simulated worm holes and character on the surface of a board. We would then move around the wood flooring using long handled scrapers to put depressions and marks within the surface of the wood floors to simulate time worn wear. We even gave new flooring an aged look by flaming the surface of the wood with heat, followed by ammonia based chemical to darken the wood floor. To finish, we would apply a coating of stain and shellac and wax finish. The whole process of antiquing wood floors is entailed, tedious and time consuming, but the look and charm of a hand scraped wood floor simply can not be beat.

To obtain authentic old wide floor boards that have the natural patina, nail and worm holes, etc. you can seek out salvage yards who commonly offer the old 8 – 20 inch wide wooden boards that have been salvaged from the demolition of 150 year old buildings and warehouses and sell them at between $10.00 - $30.00 a square foot.

Manufactured Hand Scraped Wood Floors – How are they made?


Due to the popularity of this flooring manufacturers nowadays are now using methods to re create that old look during the manufacturing process. One common method of creating factory produced, hand scraped wood flooring is to use automated machines. During the milling of the wood, machines skim the surface of the wood boards, creating rows of depressions within the wood’s surface. The machine’s gouging and/or sanding wheels vary in rotation, depth and size depending on the manufacturer’s specifications. The hand scraped wood flooring is then enhanced by the staining and finishing process – Shown above. Examples of machine distressing can be found in the Mannington "Rustic" Collections and Mullican Solid Chatelaine and Engineered Chalmette.


A back to basic method offered by some manufacturers to produce hand scraped wood flooring is to use skilled workers to actually hand scrape the flooring by hand at the manufacturing plant. One of these manufacturers is Homerwood who use tools like metal gouges, chisels, hand planes etc. to create the appearance of the hand scraped wood flooring correctly. Consequently, each floor is distinct because of the individual technique of the craftsmen. The wood flooring is then completed when the hand scraped wood flooring is enhanced by the staining and finishing process. This method of hand scraped wood flooring has a more natural appearance, but consumers should be prepared to pay a higher cost for the more custom authentic look – Shown below. Examples of manufacturers using actual artisans to antique each board individually by hand are Homerwood and Anderson Vinyard Collection and Virginia Vintage Collection.

Remember that each manufacturer will have its own unique antiquing process for hand scraped wood. As a result, one manufacturer’s hand scraped flooring will look different when compared to a second manufacturer’s style. Consumers should NOT expect their delivered flooring to look exactly like the small sample they saw at a flooring retail showroom.

Hand scraped hardwood flooring is available in 3/4 inch thick solid wood floor styles for installations over wood sub floors and engineered wood flooring styles in various thicknesses for installations over concrete slabs. Optional installation methods for Hand scraped wood flooring are based on the particular manufacturers recommendations but most allow their flooring to be either nailed/stapled down, direct glued down or Floated - either click locked or glued together.

Some of the engineered hand scraped wood floors have a thin wear layer and may not be able to be sanded and refinished in the future. However, this factor solely depends on the thickness of the wear layer of that particular engineered floor. Future sanding these types of floors - if ever needed with commercial sanding machines would remove most of the character applied at the factory. Therefore, if the flooring should ever need to be renewed later we would recommend just a light sanding and recoating the hand scraped floors by hand in order to retain the look and charm for many years.