What Is Hand Scraped Wood Flooring

Hand scraped wood flooring is an extremely popular wood flooring option with anyone seeking something just a little bit different.  This type of wood flooring, as the name suggests is wood flooring which has been made to look old, somewhat distressed and worn, using a technique called hand scraping.  Hand scraped wooden floors come in a variety of different looks, each with a uniqueness which serves to enhance the appeal of this choice of wood flooring.

The hand scraping technique used today to age wood flooring is not new and in fact dates back to way before mechanical wood working tools had even been invented.  Prior to machining wood, planks were typically sawn by hand for use as flooring.  As you can imagine, hand-cut planks, by their very nature, had a tendency to be uneven and irregular, unlike their modern day, machined equivalents.

Hand scraping was the method used before mechanical wood working tools were invented to make hand sawn wood flooring look more level, and to remove irregularities and undulations in the overall floor.  Ironically pre-machine hand scraping was a method used to do the complete opposite of what it does today, that’s to say, then it was used to make the floor look more perfect, today it’s used to make the floor look worn!  When wood was hand scraped in these early days, it was common for the process to involve the soaking of the wood to make scraping easier.

As with many other style choices today, this aged, hand made looking wooden flooring option is much sought after, although more often than not, “hand” scraping nowadays is carried out by machine rather than actually by hand.

Hand scraped wood flooring, either created by machine or by hand takes on an aged, worn look which suggests that the floor has a real heritage and a bit of a story to tell.  The finish on hand scraped floors suggest that the floor could have lived a previous life in a grand building or may have survived many years of traffic in a popular place, both of which add to its charm.

The technique of hand scraping can be carried out on either solid or engineered floors to create this sought after worn, weathered and “test of time” look.  Not surprisingly, you should expect to pay significantly more for wood which has been scraped by hand than machine scraped wood, due to the labour intensive nature of the process.  That said, wood which is completely hand scraped has a definite uniqueness all of its own.