Nowadays customers frequently decide to buy completely finished wooden floorings. The lifespan of such floorings mostly depends on the hardness of their surface. 33 samples of finished wooden floorings that were obtained from the Slovene market were tested to determine how the coating system influences the surface hardness of the flooring. The Brinell hardness of the samples with coating systems was determined with the SIST EN 1534:2003, using the Zwick Z100 instrument. Afterwards we planed the samples to remove the coating and re-measured the hardness. The results showed that in most cases the coating does not greatly or significantly contribute to the hardness of wood flooring (up to 10 % increase or decrease of hardness was observed in comparison to the hardness of the flooring without any coating). However some samples deviated substantially from this common rule, with the coating layer increasing the hardness of the flooring by up to 30 %.
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