Special
Hard wax oil
LOTS OF FLOOR FITTERS STILL SWEAR BY HARD WAX OIL INTRINSIC QUALITIES AND LOW MAINTENANCE PROVE A HIT
Photo – Ciranova
Anyone whose childhood included a whiff of the ‘aroma’ of a polished floor will surely never forget the experience. For many people that is precisely the experience of real parquet. The patina is obtained through years of polishing, polishing, and even more polishing. Hard wax oil is undoubtedly the most recent wonder of the technological advance in wooden floor treatment. For floor fitters hard wax oil is a real technological blessing. It means they can apply a longstanding and much loved finish in just a single working session for many products.
Protection through saturation The principle of a film-forming finish like that of lacquer is totally different to the saturation of the wood. When we apply a lacquer finish, we apply a film all over the wood. Obviously, that means you can no longer feel the actual wood grain as clearly. Saturation fills the pores of the wood. And so, there is no layer of film, but the wood is filled to the
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Floor Forum International 110
top so that dirt and water cannot penetrate inside the wood. The layer which is deposited onto the wood surface after saturation is still open.
With polish It goes without saying that the look of floors from grandma’s day can never be copied for the full 100%. After all, that look was not only the result of a product, but also and especially of a treatment. Year in year out, the floor was maintained by treating it with wax. In other words, maintenance also meant nourishing the floor at the same time to keep the saturation at the right level. Floors which have been treated in this way for years have a warm and unique patina.
With oil When we consider that maintaining such floors (e.g. in museums and public buildings) is now more tolerable since we can use a buffing machine, the step towards saturation with oil is only logical. After all, the buffing machine heats the wax slightly to make it more fluid. Oil
