Noticed something I’d never seen before in remodeling they’re doing in our building:
The building dates from 1956 and was originally built for what you might call “light industrial” work (actually, a training area for data equipment service people). Most of the building has straight-forward concrete floors (with the usual vinyl-asbestos tile over it, much of which has been recently “abated”). But in this area the concrete is lower, with wood flooring on top.
The flooring is about one “honest” inch thick and appears to consist of pieces about 2.5″ wide and a foot long. They are grooved along all four edges and held together with metal (zinc?) splines. The end joints all line up, suggesting that the wood may have been pre-assembled into probably foot-wide “tiles”. A cut-back style adhesive appears to have been used under the flooring.
Impossible to say what type of wood it is, or what the original finish was. The original use of the building doesn’t suggest why the wood flooring may have been used (especially in a relatively limited area of the building), other than perhaps to provide a nailable surface. The original use of the building wouldn’t have required a refinishable “wear” surface.
Anyone ever seen this? In the old RCA plant in Camden NJ I saw WWII vintage end-cut wood flooring, made for moderately heavy industrial situations, but this is different.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. –T.S. Eliot
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As you said they may have being tiles. My guess for the metal strips, they may have grounded them to stop static electricity
No, the metal splines were not attached to anything -- just stuck in the slots. Not even touching each other.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
I installed end grain Doug fir flooring that had metal splines (actually a circle in cross section) whose purpose was to simply hold the individual pieces together into "blocks" that could be laid easier and faster. Install was done with a proprietary adhesive.
Not the same stuff you are talking about but the function of the spline is probably the same.
Junckers flooring used metal splines and clips for their athletic floor systems. I have repaired one in NYC in the past.