How to fix deep scratches in engineered wood floors?

Submitted by _sugartits t3_10o65a3 in DIY

Hi all - as the title says I have some pretty deep gouges and scrapes in my floor from Airbnb guests moving the bed (with hairpin legs) from it's protective surface. I don't mind so much about the depth of the scratches, but more that the protective surface is gone.

https://imgur.com/a/44i0JB5

Is there an easy method for fixing which doesn't involve sanding and refinishing? I've tried wax repair kits before but I'd prefer a solution that is as close to the original finish as possible

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AccomplishedEnergy24 t1_j6d22xo wrote

So first, the white stuff is just the visible clear coat damage.
That's what aluminum oxide + polyurethane looks like when you abrade it. You need to get rid of it to see what is really going on.

Take some denatured alcohol and paper bag (or no-scratch sponge), and remove it by carefully rubbing. You can also use a white woven pad.

Most of the damage seems like it will look like your 3rd picture.

Those are mostly compression streaks (or look like it from this distance - they don't have a visible ragged edge from this distance), which is good because it means you didn't gouge the floor, you just dented it, at least there.

Those will steam out for the most part - use a wet (but not dripping) cloth and an iron on high heat, and you should be able to decompress them. Your goal is to get the wood fibers to uncrush. That happens through steam. It does not take a lot. Note that for those who don't have properly-finished floors (which, if an installer did the finishing, happens sometimes. It's very rare with factory finished boards), you have to be careful not to delaminate

Once you've steamed out all the dents and removed any visible clearcoat damage, i'd need a picture of what's left - where are there real scratches vs dents vs whatever.

Note that you can't repair the clearcoat without some amount of refinishing.

I do a lot of wood finishing. Factory floors are done with multiple coats of 2k urethane. Even home floors are at least 2 coats when done by good finishers.

You aren't going to be able to perfectly reproduce that. To try to get somewhere, it needs to be level first, since it will otherwise catch your eye (hence steaming out dents, etc).

Once that is done, you can try repairing the spots with 1 component floor urethanes, but it will be very hard to feather the edges properly so that it's not noticeable - you would need a very good gloss degree match for starters (If i was trying to repair something serious, i would use my gloss meter to see what the sheen is), and then good sanding skills with high grits.

Do not mess around with 2 component (resin + hardener) urethanes (IE Bona Traffic HD, etc) yourself without proper PPE . Stick to 1k. The 2k hardeners are just about all isocyanate based, which is odorless except at concentrations that are dangerous for you. This makes it hard to tell if the vapor cartridge in your respirator (which is 100% a must) is working because you can't use smell to tell if it's working until it's way too late. It can also be absorbed dermally so you must wear a suit + gloves. It is otherwise easy to protect against - it is not going to get through normal nitrile gloves, etc. This is why you see most flooring installers and spray foam contractors in breaking-bad style chem suits these days if they have any sanity ;)

On the plus side, the hardener reacts very fast with moisture in the air, so if you wear proper PPE and rolled it with a paint roller, it would be 100% fine. Isocyanate free formulations are starting to come into vogue, but not in floor finishes yet.

Also note that most "hard wax" oils people now seem to want to put on floors are also hardened with isocyanate - it is perfectly VOC compliant, even if it's dangerous to people (since VOC's are about air pollution and not human toxicity). They play a lot of marketing games to try to act as if the stuff is super-safe, but you also need PPE here too. All of these (1k urethane, 2k urethane, hardwax oil, etc) are perfectly safe once cured, which is quite fast.

Outside of 1k urethanes, clear waxes are going to be your best bet for something a DIY'er can do beyond refinishing.

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unopened_textbooks t1_j6fnpwq wrote

This is interesting!! Off topic a little, but do you know whether the steaming technique could help with gouges in merbau decking?

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AccomplishedEnergy24 t1_j6fopyf wrote

Gouges depend a lot. You can try it - it won't hurt (assuming you don't burn the wood/finish, which is often pretty hard to do).

Dents usually just have bent fibers. They are pressed in half or whatever, but still together.

Steaming works because it straightens the fiber back up into the original shape. They want to be in their original shape.

Gouges usually have ripped fibers on the edge. Steaming will not work because it does not put the fibers back together :)

Now, it's never quite this distinct. Even gouges are usually a mix of bent/dented fibers, and ripped fibers.

So steaming is worth a shot, and can often make it better depending on how much was a dent vs a rip. Just don't expect miracles. Especially, if it's visibly torn. You can often see whether the fibers are ripped with the naked eye.

(and if your eyesight sucks, a 20x loupe from cvs or whatever will definitely show you)

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unopened_textbooks t1_j6g12x2 wrote

Thanks mate, appreciate your knowledge :) Definitely worth a go, and funny enough, my eyesight is shocking and I actually have a pair of loupes in my Amazon cart as we speak! You've given me the last push I needed to actually buy them!

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Baneken t1_j6dze05 wrote

Yeah IPA or IsoPranolAlcohol products work really well on removing paint marks and won't damage paint or lacquer.

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zemsten t1_j6e72tz wrote

>Yeah IPA or IsoPranolAlcohol

I think what you were looking for here was isopropanol, or isopropyl alcohol.

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HomeImproverDIY t1_j6ffpoj wrote

> "hard wax" oils people now seem to want to put on floors are also hardened with isocyanate

Sorry to go off topic but this caught my eye because I was recently recommended, by a very helpful local store, Rubio Monocat Oil Plus 2C to be used for DIY hardwood finishing. The employees at the store recommended this as a low-VOC option and the issue of PPE did not come up at all during the otherwise lengthy conversation.

The web site boasts 0% VOC, and when I search the manufacturer web site for "isocyanate" I get nothing.

Elsewhere I get this:

"Yes, our B-component has < 0.1% free isocyanates in it, but it’s not toxic. Not for the applicator of the product, nor for the people living in the room where the Accelerator, comp. B was used. That is a fact that has been confirmed by 2 independent established companies."

How would you go about making sure that this product is in fact safe to install for an amateur?

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AccomplishedEnergy24 t1_j6fkuvv wrote

I'll give you a very long answer, sorry.

First- for rubio - 0.1% is low, for sure. Most hardeners contain 10-25% HDI. Their MSDS claims 0.5% of free HDI, not 0.1%, FWIW.

Claims that it is not toxic are wrong. They are a huge offender in the "sell people bullshit" category. Do not get me wrong - it is definitely less toxic - it is about two orders of magnitude less toxic to use than other things.

But it is not non-toxic. Don't take my word for it, look at the MSDS: https://ardec.ca/media/catalog/documents/MSDS_Rubio_Monocoat_Oil_Plus_2C_-_comp._B_EN.pdf

Look at what the PPE requirements are, etc.

If it was non-toxic, it would say it was not toxic and had nothing that required reporting at all. The MSDS for non-toxic things do not say "wear gloves and a respirator". They say "no hazardous chemicals or chemicals required to be reported".

Their MSDS does not say that, because it's not non-toxic.

If you look at older SDS from ~2008, it was classed also as specifically toxic to your respiratory tract, but no longer. Part of this is just that these are not sprayed, and warn against spraying. Isocyanate reacts really fast. So the most hazard is often when spraying it, from spray bounce back. It reacts fast enough that, say, rolling it does not generate a detectable level at breathing height. This means when they are meant for wiping, they are classed as less dangerous, and the precautions are mostly around skin contact.

So monocoat is better than most things. Despite hating them taking advantage of people, I would use it!

You can see it is low enough that it is generally classed as sensitizing rather than dangerous.

Compare to the bona traffic hd SDS: https://www.bona.com/globalassets/catalogassets/bona-traffic-hd-hardener-english-us-bona-us-united-states-us-sds-hcs-2012.pdf

But even for monocoat the PPE required is still gloves and respirator, and you should do that.

They probably mean that it's not toxic when cured, which they are required to test/prove. This is true of basically all wood finishes in the US due to various regulations.

In the end, look, lots of things in your body can be replaced. Not that you should live life trying to kill your organs, but like, liver and kidney transplants and such are not a complete death sentence. People often live full lives.

Lung issues, however, are often quite bad. IPF, etc are basically a death sentence. Lung transplants have one of the lowest 5 year survival rate of any organ. As a careful woodworker, i've seen too many woodworkers not use a mask with wood dust or spray finishing, and end up dying of lung issues at 55/60.

Don't fuck with your lungs, and don't let some company selling shit like this convince you to do it.

Second - VOC is not about direct human toxicity. At all I wish all these low-voc companies were literally required to tell people this. Companies know that people associate VOC with toxicity (IE low VOC = non toxic) and take serious advantage of this to try to sell things as better for you by being low VOC. Ignore all of it. It's all basically meaningless for the purpose of determining whether it's something safe to use in your house.

VOC = Volatile Organic Component. Theoretically about vapor pressure, actually. But in practice mostly about air pollution.

In the US (at least), VOC's basically equate to chemicals that cause various forms of air-pollution through photochemical reactivity (IE exposure to sunlight). The rest are exempt (acetone, etc). VOC's includes most things that smell good, like perfume, FWIW.

Isocyanate, while dangerous for humans, is not a VOC - it is not photochemically reactive. Instead, it reacts very quickly with moisture in air (which is why most danger is from bounce back from spraying it)

This is totally orthogonal to direct human toxicity. There are very low VOC things that are very dangerous to breathe. There are very high VOC components that are relatively okay.
As a first step, never confuse whether something is a VOC with whether it is safe to breathe directly.

What VOC compliance has often done a lot of is replace chemicals that are horrible for pollution but not that directly toxic to people, with chemicals that are better for pollution but more directly toxic to people. This is sort of a deliberate tradeoff, under the assumption that air pollution (which gets to everyone) is more dangerous overall than the toxicity (which gets to those spraying it).

For example, butyl acetate (a VOC), which is what makes a bunch of fruit smell/taste sweet, has been replaced with acetone (VOC exempt) in a lot of formulations.

This ends up worse for people spraying it - acetone is much harder to protect against with PPE. Butyl acetate is not carcinogenic, acetone is "unknown", etc

But better for the environment overall.

If you want to know whether and how something is toxic to you, ignore whatever marketing material they produce, and read the MSDS.

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HomeImproverDIY t1_j6ggm6b wrote

Thank you, especially for pointing this out:

> VOC is not about direct human toxicity

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visibl3ghost t1_j6g1uz7 wrote

Recently used Rubio to finish a bunch of floating shelves in my kitchen. That stuff is amazing and smells sooooo good. If they made Rubio scented candles they'd fly off of the shelves.

Finsish is also quite waterproof and has held up almost a year very well. Nice thing with Rubio is refinishing is very easy.

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_sugartits OP t1_j6heuey wrote

Thank you so much for the detailed response - totally unexpected! I'll give these directions a try and update.

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BlueberryKind t1_j6cr8ar wrote

First thing I tried is walnut. Rubbing walnut on the scratches often work. Cause of the oils in it it helps also with water proofing the scratches

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_sugartits OP t1_j6hexw2 wrote

I'll definitely try this on the lighter scratches!

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Temporary_Big8747 t1_j6f91qa wrote

Lots of great ideas here. Make sure to put some kind of floor protection on the leg bottoms too so hopefully you're not faced with this problem again. Good luck & I hope you give updates.

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_sugartits OP t1_j6hewut wrote

I did have little rubber pads, but I guess our guests wanted to leave an impression (pardon the pun)

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zerodmge t1_j6cughc wrote

Have had some success with color matched epoxy filler.

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tiger_lilium t1_j6e43p8 wrote

Bet at least one person wasn’t walking quite right after that session.

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CragMcBeard t1_j6e927t wrote

Just fill it with crayon bro.

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once_was_enough t1_j6fvxg0 wrote

I can't help with the floor repair but to prevent scratches with my own hairpin leg furniture I got a piece of clear tubing from the hardware store, used a utility knife to cut lengthwise down the edge, and then popped that over the hairpin where it meets the floor. No more scratches and it's pretty inconspicuous.

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