In Which A Floor is Scraped

So it's been a while, but we finally have the master bedroom floor scraped down to mostly wood. We decided to not to try and get to bare wood as that has a non-linear time requirement curve and we can get rid of the last bit of shellac with denatured alcohol (or at least spread it around enough to even out the color). I invested in 4 carbide scrapers from the BORG: the Husky brand curved blade 2.5" carbide scrapers are pretty great for flooring purposes. Since the floors are in no way level or flat, the curved blade helps deal with the waviness in the planks. I bought a pack of replacement blades off of amazon, but they only seem to carry straight blades; the straight blades work well for fast rough passes, but they have a tendency to dig in and gouge the planks if you aren't careful.

 

Like with the sandpaper, the old shellac quickly gums up the scraper blade and we had to constantly take breaks to scrape the hardened shellac goo off the working edge. The carbide blades are double sided, but it doesn't take long before they get dulled and scraping gets harder and harder. We were trying to be frugal with the curved blades until I figured out how to resharpen them using a diamond honing block. The resharpened edge doesn't last as long as the factory edge, but it made the going easier by encouraging us to change blades more frequently.
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Here is the floor after it had been vacuumed and rubbed down with mineral spirits to pick up all the dust. I've never liked tack cloths, they always seem to leave a sticky residue.

 

The floor isn't quite read for the shellac yet, but it looks a lot better, doesn't it. There are some nasty gouges and holes that need to be repaired, I have a plug cutting kit and some planks I ripped out of the floor in front of the red room to try and make oak plugs with contemporaneous material. 

Stay tuned...