All of the veneers used in CRAFT’s floors are solid-sawn, meaning that our floors can be sanded and refinished multiple times, extending the life and value of a CRAFT floor for generations.
How a CRAFT Floor Is Made
CRAFT built its reputation as an artisan wood flooring specialist through a deep understanding of wood, appearance, and performance.
Today, our engineered hardwood floors are made through a carefully managed manufacturing process designed to deliver both beauty and reliability.
The Process of Making a CRAFT Floor
Each stage plays a role in shaping the beauty, stability, and quality of the finished floor.
The CRAFT Difference – Lumber Sourcing
CRAFT makes its own lamellas (wear layers) from responsibly sourced North American hardwood lumber. The wood we use is carefully selected for beautiful colour, strong grain character, and overall visual quality, and is sourced from leading lumber mills in the United States. In many cases, the most desirable wood comes from the colder northern boundaries of its natural growing region, where slower growth can produce tighter grain and refined colour variation.
CRAFT uses only the highest quality lumber sourced from the northernmost growing regions, to create flooring with a consistent, tight-grain appearance. This upstream attention to wood quality helps set the stage for everything that follows.
RE-SAWING LAMELLAS: PRECISION FROM THE START
One of the most important early steps in making a CRAFT floor is transforming hardwood lumber into solid-sawn lamellas (wear layers). This early-stage precision helps set the foundation for the beauty and consistency of a CRAFT floor. Planks of hardwood lumber are first ripped and planed, then cut to the required dimensions before moving through a high-precision frame saw. This careful re-sawing process allows CRAFT to produce its own lamellas from solid lumber, maintaining close control over thickness, quality, and appearance from the very beginning.
After re-sawing, each lamella is inspected and any unsound or unusable areas are removed. This step may appear simple, but it plays an important role in shaping the final look of the floor. Careful judgment at this stage helps determine the quality and beauty of the finished wear layer.
Precision machinery shapes each lamella, but careful human judgment remains essential in preparing it for the finished floor. By producing and refining our own lamellas in-house, CRAFT maintains closer control over the quality of the finished wear layer.
Lamella Colour Sorting: Where Beauty Begins
One of the most important early steps in shaping the final look of a CRAFT floor. CRAFT makes its own lamellas (wear layers) from responsibly sourced North American hardwood lumber. By producing and sorting our own wear layers, we maintain greater control over colour, grain pattern, and visual consistency than brands that purchase pre-made veneer components.
CRAFT artisans sort lamellas by wood colour, grain pattern, and grade characteristics to create floors with a more consistent and beautiful overall appearance. This careful, hands-on sorting process is one of the details that gives CRAFT floors their refined, natural appearance.
WOOD CONDITIONING: BUILT FOR STABILITY
Before lamellas are glued to the structural core, both components are conditioned separately through a precisely controlled 84-hour schedule in custom-designed conditioning kilns. This important step helps relieve residual internal stresses within the wood fibres before assembly. By stabilizing both layers in advance, CRAFT helps create a more reliable engineered structure with strong dimensional stability. It is one of the process details that supports the long-term performance of our floors across a wide range of interior environments.
Custom-designed conditioning kilns help prepare lamellas and cores for stable long-term performance.
A Stable Core: for Long-Term Performance
CRAFT’s multi-ply hardwood core is built for structural stability and dependable long-term performance. Engineered to support the hardwood wear layer above, it helps the floor remain stable through seasonal changes in indoor humidity and temperature.
5/8” thick, engineered structure
Hardwood Wear Layer – 3mm
Made from responsibly sourced North American hardwood. CRAFT produces and sorts its own solid-sawn lamellas for greater control over colour, grain, and overall appearance.
Seven-Ply Hardwood Plywood Core
Built from structural-grade eucalyptus plywood for strong structural stability. PEFC-certified sourcing supports responsible material selection and traceability.
Why Plywood Performs
Plywood’s dimensional stability comes from its layered construction: each hardwood ply is oriented at 90° to the next, reinforcing the panel and creating a stable, reliable structural platform.
A. Top Layer: Solid-Sawn Hardwood Wear Layer
- Solid-sawn 3.0mm veneer allows for 2-3 re-sandings
- True solid plank look with engineered stability
- Made from North American hardwood, a responsibly managed renewable resource
B. DACS III Core: Solid-Sawn Core Fillets
- Superior rigidity prevents cupping and width shrinkage
- Made from structural grade Canadian Spruce that is PEFC certified to be from responsibly managed, sustainable sources
C. Solid-Sawn Side Strips
- Contributes to overall stability by sealing off fillet endgrain, thereby reducing changes to core moisture content
- DACS III tongue and groove simulate the function and appearance of solid wood flooring
D. Wood Adhesive: Used To Glue ALL Components Together
- Highest quality formaldehyde-free, low-VOC wood glue
- All CRAFT floors are RED LIST FREE and GREENGUARD Gold certified, for a healthy living environment with excellent indoor air quality.
ABOUT THE SOLID-SAWN METHOD
Many hardwood flooring manufacturers, especially those that make thin ½” and 9/16” products, use very thin rotary peeled or sliced veneers. This peeling or slicing process can negatively affect the structural integrity of the veneers, and it considerably degrades their appearance. The net result is a veneer that’s typically too thin to be re-sanded even one time, and a wood pattern that can look strange or inauthentic. Given that such thin-veneer flooring cannot be re-sanded, it ends up being “single-use” material which negatively impacts its overall lifetime value, and results in a lower-ranking from an environmental perspective.
In contrast, the veneers in high quality, long-lasting engineered flooring are made by way of the “solid-sawn method”, whereby veneers are sawn in thick layers from planks of hardwood lumber. This process retains the wood’s structural integrity and results in the most natural, aesthetically pleasing grain patterns.
CRAFT's Core in the field
Allan Peters MRAIC, and A.W. PETERS & ASSOCIATES LTD explains his choice of CRAFT within the homes he designs which require high-quality wood and a solid-sawn core that can withstand the tests of moisture, humidity, and temperature, allowing for designs to include features such as built-in radiant heat.
Why It Works Together
A CRAFT engineered floor brings together a carefully sorted hardwood wear layer, a stable seven-ply eucalyptus plywood core, and DuRa Finish™ Ultra Matte. The result is a floor designed to deliver refined natural beauty, reliable stability, and long-term performance.
