How did they refinish wood floors before power tools?

[amerikat]

It's hard work and time consuming even with the latest power tools.

[Warpy]

1. Refinish?

Most of those old floors were polished by hard use, at least up in New England. They were planed as splinter free as possible and installed. The ones in the fancier places were sealed with either boiled linseed oil or varnish. Poor folks used them as is unless they could afford paint, and then they painted them.

Refinishing consisted of filling in deep gouges and reapplying the finish.

A lot of the old places I've lived in had patterned hardwood or thin hardwood planking in the parlor areas. The rest of the house had wide softwood boards. The kitchen was subjected to especially hard use and that's the first place that saw paint and then later linoleum. While they might have taken reasonable care of the parlor floor (hiding it under rugs, using the room only for formal occasions), the rest of the place never saw any sort of refinishing as we know it.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

2. Wooden ships and deck planks indeed

Interesting post Warpy !

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Actually., they used scrapers and yes, it was a bitch.

Sand paper was not really an option and you couldn't run down to Home Depot any time you needed something. Scrapers were generally made of hardened metal They knew how to harden steel in the Roman times and the Chinese knew how long before that by using heat, like in swords and stuff.) You use a hardened piece of steel, preferably with a burred edge and you scrape the wood. This is how they finished early American gun stocks. I learned about these while trying to re create some early American powder horns and you can still buy them at the hardware store. I know because I now own two of them.

I too, had wondered about that because 1. I have been in construction all my life and, having grown up in the Victorians in San Francisco, have often marveled at the craftsmanship in these buildings, most of which was done without the use of power tools and 2. Several years ago, I took up the hobby of re creating early American long rifles and have learned bunches about the skills of our forefathers and the incredible work they could do without so much as an electric light. Those folks were beyond awsome.

Contrary to what you may see here, magnificent hardwood floors were around long before power tools.

It may also interest you to know that they often mixed various chemicals with crushed Amber to make varnish.