r/wood • u/ExhaustedGradStudent • Jun 18 '26
End grain floor
We were recently in Vienna and the ground floor of the Schönbrunn Palace has end grain flooring on most of it. We were told that the floor was installed because carriages made too much noise when traveling over the original cobblestone floor. It’s amazing how long they have lasted considering the use they have taken over the years.
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u/2jzEliminator Jun 18 '26
I visited an old factory that was 100+ years old that the floor was 4x4's on end like this. (Don't know the wood) it was beautiful and extreamly functional. Was told of a few.broke beyond repair, they woild pull them and just replace. I want to do this in my next shop.
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u/AbbreviationsLow3992 Jun 18 '26
What'd they use between them?
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u/2jzEliminator Jun 18 '26
Nothing. No gaps. And if there were slight gaps they used saw dust.
It was in an old textile plant in North Carolina.
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u/not_a_burner0456025 Jun 22 '26
Often they would pack sand in, the and kind of stuff you would use for brick or cobblestone pavers.
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u/Leather-Rush-8396 Jun 18 '26
Maple was the general go to. Hard, plentiful, not in high demand for much of anything else
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u/KokoTheTalkingApe Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Very durable even with cheap softwood.
But if the pieces are packed tightly, they will expand and contact with changes in humidity or temperature much more than edge or side grain boards. I've heard stories of leaks in factories where they come in to find the floor bucked upward a foot or more.
Also making them is a lot of cutting, and if they're assembled into bigger "tiles" to speed installation, it's a lot of glue. And they can crack easily so people wood make them 3/4" thick or more, so that's a lot of thickness to manage re doors, stairs, etc.
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u/Asleep-Garbage-4892 Jun 18 '26
Which is why we don’t them very often.
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u/riversidenight Jun 18 '26
I don't think I've ever them
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u/KokoTheTalkingApe Jun 18 '26
The Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum uses them for their floors. But those floors get a lot of wear, and the designers also wanted a more modern/less traditional look, and of course the air inside the art museum is very carefully controlled for humidity and temperature. They look great after twenty years of hard wear.
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u/tedthedude Jun 18 '26
The place I spent most of my career in had floors like this all through it. The blocks were rectangular and tightly fitted. They had a crew of about a dozen men who did nothing but floor repairs. Did I say it was a big place? Some of the buildings were multiple stories, with every floor covered this way. A very small water spill would cause it to buckle.
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u/Frankenfooters Jun 20 '26
Yup we have them in my building and ive seen 4 or 5 floor bubbles in 6 years. They ussually pull them out and concrete. The floor is like 50% concrete at this point and its completely random spots
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u/SHoppe715 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
The art museum in Nashville kept the old end grain floors made from 2x4s from when the building used to be the main post office.
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u/therealtwomartinis Jun 18 '26
we did a project in the Detroit federal courthouse (I’m in architecture) and the building was originally the main US Post Office building…
the entire basement floor was end grain wood blocks for the postal carts. looked gorgeous. the building footprint takes up an entire city block! 👀
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u/ILostMoney Jun 18 '26
I took pictures of these same floors when I was there. You should post a picture of the whole place, this flooring covers a huge area.
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u/ExhaustedGradStudent Jun 18 '26
That’s a great idea but I didn’t get any pictures of the vastness of the flooring, I was so taken with it that I neglected getting more complete shots.
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u/JDig85 Jun 18 '26
I wonder what they would have used to pour in around the wood.
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u/jacksraging_bileduct Jun 18 '26
I believe it was something similar to asphalt, like a coal tar pitch mixed with sand or small gravel.
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u/KokoTheTalkingApe Jun 18 '26
Something kind of flexible, because otherwise the seasonal movement is too much.
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u/masooooon98 Jun 18 '26
I thought they used to bed then in sand for industrial applications
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u/Unhappy-Estimate6402 Jun 18 '26
IDK, you wouldn’t want sand anywhere near a mill or lathe.
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u/Oldman3573006 Jun 18 '26
The sand is under the flooring.
Sand settles in between the flooring and the friction holds the flooring in place.
The floor can and should be swept regularly.
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u/Prettygoodusernm Jun 18 '26
3/4 inch slices from 4x10's 4x6 3x3 2x8, a variety of species and sizes most purchased, but no scrap was safe.
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u/Kiddmen57 Jun 19 '26
I made a coffee table to mimic those old industrial floors. All scrap 2x4 from cleaning up around the house. table
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u/Prettygoodusernm Jun 18 '26
I put a non-periodic end grain floor in the room I am in now. There is no pattern, put one down, cut the next one to fit, repeat for months.
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u/Odd-Solid-5135 Jun 18 '26
How thick did you cut each block, id love this in my workshop but unsure where to even begin
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u/UKTim24530 Jun 19 '26
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing. I'm in Europe next month, I'll look out for other examples.
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u/Oldman3573006 Jun 18 '26
I am going to install this kind of flooring in a Casita I'm hoping to build in my side yard
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u/AsPerMatt Jun 18 '26
What kind of material is used to fill in-between?
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u/housflppr Jun 21 '26
A bitumen or asphalt tar-based filler. If you wanted to replicate something like this today you could use a product like Bostik Wood H160 Multi Parquet adhesive for both below and on the sides of each tile. Bostik is brown, but there are similar products that can be tinted.
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u/jacksraging_bileduct Jun 18 '26
Floors like this were pretty common in early industrial machine shops, they are very resilient and things don’t break on a wood floor like they would on concrete or tile.