Do not be deceived by false comments such as “It scratches easily“, or “It expands and won’t last” etc. These slurs originated from many years ago when flooring companies tried to stop bamboo from becoming the recognised competitor which it is now and when some of the early bamboo flooring types, and installation practices, hadn’t yet been refined.
Fibrestrand Woven Bamboo Flooring is not only beautiful, it is also the hardest, most scratch-resistent, longest wearing, natural “timber” flooring.
Manufacturing Procedure: Long sections of mature Moso Bamboo (Philostachis Pubescens) are crushed and broken down into long strands, still half strung together whilst their parallel orientation is maintained. They are then coated with modern German Klumpp resin and pressed together with heat into a mould to form a block 1.9m long and 100mm wide and 150mm deep with a force of 5700 tonnes. These blocks are then cut and molded into boards and machined to the perfect shape required. They are then coated and cured under UV light with 6 separate coats of special polyurethane which produces a quality finish – far superior to one which can be achieved when a timber floor is sanded and coated with air-drying stains.
The difference in procedure between ‘natural’ and ‘coffee’ Fibrestrandwoven Bamboo Flooring is that the ‘coffee’ blocks have had a higher and longer heat treatment (rather like ‘cooking’ the bamboo in an oven, to darken it a little, before the manufacturing process begins. The carbonising effect is uniform throughout the profile of the board and is permanent. Interestingly, the carbonised, with a hardness of 15.5 kpa is slightly harder than the natural with a hardness of 14.5 Kpa because of the massive amount of pressure applied. In laminated bamboo flooring the carbonised is a little softer than the natural.
Some Relative Hardness Data
The Janka Test of hardness shows the force required to embed an 11.28mm (0.444 inch) diameter steel ball to half its diameter in wood. The higher the force required, the harder the material and therefore the better wearing characteristics.
