Is Aluminum Oxide a hard finish?
Everywhere you look, someone will be pushing a prefinished hardwood with Aluminum Oxide, or Titanium, or Ceramics in the finish – 25 year warranties, or 50 year warranties. Wow. If we listened to what the manufactures are saying, we’d have floors that were made of metal and would last forever – that is not the case. It is true, Aluminum Oxide is the 4th hardest substance known to mankind, but it is also a crystal – therefore to put it in the finish, it must be powdered beyond recognition and suspended in the molecules of the polyurethane. It does add to the scratch resistance of the product, but it is NOT FOR HARDNESS. The finishes are MADE TO DENT. The idea behind the softness of these finishes is that, the point of the finish is to protect the wood. By placing a softer finish on the board, when something is dropped on the floor (which always happens) the finish will move with the floor instead of cracking. If the finish was hard and cracked, the floor would forever-after be exposed i
