Tales From the Front: Young'un Takes Big Machine For a Ride - HF Editors

What to Do About Contractor Classification Laws - D. Jeffrey Craven
Since 2009, Democrats in Congress along with the Obama Administration—looking for a way to capture more tax revenue—have been attempting to repeal or modify ...

Trick of the Trade: Splatter No More - HF Editors
Mixing underlayment or anything else in a 5-gallon pail can be a big mess. A simple, free solution is to...

Trick of the Trade: No More Coffee Breaks - HF Editors
When you're coating a floor, you want the air in the room to be as still as possible, but after a couple hours...

Trick of the Trade: Tricky Ventilation - HF Editors
For most finishes, you don't want air movement while you're applying, but you do want it after the finish is skinned over. Turning on...

Trick of the Trade: Readying a Repair - HF Editors
Doing finish repairs is tricky, even for the most experienced finishers. How do you know...

Trick of the Trade: Listen to this Story (Story Stick, That Is) - HF Editors
Trying to get accurate measurements for stair parts can be frustrating when using flexible metal measuring tapes...

Trick of the Trade: Save Your Neck - HF Editors
When refinishing stair treads, it's difficult to clean up the underside of the nosing. Quite often...

Museum Goes Green With Reclaimed Gym Wood Flooring - Doug Dalsing
The perfect floor covering for a kids’ museum exhibit focused on salvaged, recycled and repurposed materials? Reclaimed gym flooring...

Planters Pimps Out Mr. Peanut’s Ride with Wood Flooring - Doug Dalsing
How does the monocled Mr. Peanut move from place to place? With the latest Planters Nutmobile, a vehicle...

Vintage Moments: Wood Flooring Maker Has WWII Roots - Doug Dalsing
After World War II, the U.S. embarked on a colossal homebuilding spree that changed the nation’s landscape. One company to benefit...

Researchers Offer Assistance to Wood Flooring Manufacturers - Doug Dalsing
In the business world, “It’s all about who you know.” One person wood flooring manufacturers should know is Pat Donahue...

Avoid Lawsuits With Smart Workplace Drug-Abuse Policies - Phillip M. Perry
Sam, one of your employees, has been acting strangely. First he started staggering and bumping into walls. Then he ignored...

Signs of a Great Workplace - Norm Spitzig
What makes a workplace great? What are the specific characteristics that great workplaces share? If there is a more basic...

How to Handle a Super-Picky Client - Bob Goldstein
I’ve been a wood floor man for 45 years and have worked for the full spectrum of people, from picky designers, to deranged...

Q&As: Customers Picking out Boards, Extending Pneumatic Tool Lifespans & Using Moisture Meters to Test Waterborne Finish - HF Editors
I installed a prefinished floor for a customer and now he’s saying he doesn’t like some of the boards...

How to Prevent Cupping and Worse in Summer Months - Craig DeWitt, Ph.D., P.E.
During the summer, even the most carefully installed wood floors tend to expand and sometimes cup or even buckle...

Tips for Top-Nailed 5/16-Inch Floors - Avi Hadad
In my region, here in California’s Bay Area, older homes typically have a floor not commonly found in many other areas: solid 5/16-inch-thick...

The Cause of 'Dry-Cupping' in Engineered Wood Floors - Dan Blake
When you're talking about problems with wood floors, nothing gets more attention than moisture and its consequences, like cupping. But lack of moisture...

Know these Facts Before Working with Bamboo Flooring - Dan Harrington
As the focus on environmental responsibility gains strength among consumers and the wood flooring industry, bamboo flooring continues to be in the spotlight...

Calculating Wood Flooring Job Costs - John Lessick
Are you charging what you should should for your wood flooring jobs?

Warning Signs of Bad Clients - Don Bollinger
Read the warning signs potential wood flooring clients send you

Taming the Buffer, Part II: Understanding How a Wood Floor Buffer Works - Galen Fitzel and Jim Schumacher
More mysteries of this wild wood flooring beast are revealed

Get a Handle on Wood Floor Staining Strategies - Kim M. Wahlgren
Some wood flooring contractors love to stain floors. They up sell their jobs by offering customers any color they desire, even without having to buy...

How to Prepare Your Wood Flooring Edger - Wayne Lee
Make sure your edger pad is "dressed" for the job

Taming the Buffer: Understanding How a Wood Floor Buffer Works, Part I - Galen Fitzel
Understanding the beast helps create better sanding jobs.

The Finer Details of Sanding and Finishing Wood Floors - Steve Seabaugh
Oftentimes contractors do all the major steps right, but overlook small detailson the job site. The result is a job that is good, but not great. This can make the difference...

Don't Take These Lazy Shortcuts When Installing Wood Floors - Steve Seabaugh
Don't take these lazy shortcuts when installing wood floors

Contractor Blog

We Are the Next Generation of NWFA I have a real fondness for the NWFA because I’ve known it for so long. I think of all of ...

Dawg, Sanding This Floor Was a Huge Task! What can be said, I have not written a word in awhile, but we have laid and sanded more than ...

What Has Time Done for Your Attitude? I was recently told that a person I knew only through social media had passed away. His name was Hank ...

Easy Tech Tips to Improve Your Business Sometimes tech evades the attention of a contractor. The brilliant side of running a company these days is that you ...

How to Compete with Lowballers We got a question from a Hardwood Floors reader about how to compete with lowballers. In this economy this is ...

Thoughts on Nailing the Thermo-Treated Maple Let’s play catch-up.The 1,600-foot of thermo-treated maple is installed, yay. Two things: One, Boone could not make it for the ...

Trick for Keeping Your Big Machine Balanced Here's my latest video blog about one of my favorite easy tricks to keep your big machine running better:

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Green Blog - Elizabeth Baldwin

Green Blog Topic Review - Master Index A few weeks ago I was asked to give someone information on formaldehyde so they could talk to a customer. ...

The Proposed Lacey RELIEF Act We’ve been discussing Lacey these last few weeks, and I’ll start this post by encouraging you to check some of ...

Lacey’s Broad Scope The Lacey Act is not just about guitars, although Gibson’s case has certainly gotten guitar owners concerned. The 2008 Lacey ...

The Lacey Act & Gibson Guitar Looking at the Lacey Act in the United States certainly requires a look at the first Lacey enforcement action, that ...

Lacey in the U.S., Part 2 I wanted to continue my look at Lacey in the U.S. The rules a U.S. harvester must follow vary from ...

Lacey in the U.S. Recently I was working with a U.S. company on what I call “green tape”—the various certifications and environmental issues I ...

Tropical Forest Foundation, Part 2 To continue my review of groups doing great work on the ground in tropical countries, I interviewed Bob Johnston, executive ...

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Inspector Blog

The Good Old Days
In 1978 there was no industry-sponsored training or conventions; in fact, there was barely a wood flooring industry. I had ...

Fact, Fiction or Opinion (cont.)
One aspect of an inspection is the background information. This information is usually collected by talking to other parties such ...

Inspector Reports: Fact, Fiction or Opinion?
Fact, fiction or opinion: In writing and evaluating reports, I am often faced with determining whether something is fact or ...

A Closer Look at Bamboo & Palm
My house has been below 30% RH for over a week now. A couple gaps have opened in my hickory ...

Board Cuts, Moisture Changes & Cupping
This blog will explore simple moisture content changes of individual S4S RO boards and how that would be related to ...

What Causes Cupping? Experiment 1 Explained
We are going to start deconstructing some of the variables related to cupping and what many people believe are the ...

What's Going on with this Cupped Floor?
Here's a question related to my fellow blogger Howard Brickman's last post about what causes cupping:Situation: The wood flooring is ...

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NWFA Blog

NWFA Services' Enhanced Technical Call Center Program
NWFA Services has enhanced its Technical Call Center program in an effort to help wood flooring manufacturers reduce the burden ...

NWFA BOD: Governance At Work
As we close in on the last weeks before NWFA's annual Wood Flooring Expo, the association's Nominating Committee and Board ...

NWFA Certified Professionals Tightens Inspector Requirements
At our January Board of Directors meeting at the Surfaces Show in Las Vegas, the NWFA Certified Professionals Inc. (NWFACP) ...

NWFA at the Hardwood Federation Fly-In
This past October, the NWFA participated in the Hardwood Federation’s annual Fly-In to Washington, D.C. The group met with more ...

Domotex Report: The World Keeps Getting Smaller
As I sit on a plane writing this, I am leaving Hannover, Germany, to return home to Denver. I was ...

Fine-Tuning Wood Flooring Training
The NWFA is constantly working to fine-tune its technical training schools to ensure that we are offering our students the ...

Join Me For a Tour of NWFA HQ
The National Wood Flooring Association Headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., serves as the hub of activities for the association. Click ...

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