Oak Hardwood Floor Repair

My house has 40 year old oak floors.  The flooring is 2 1/4 tongue and grove 3/4 thick.  The bed rooms and hall way have been covered over with wall to wall carpet some time in the 70's.  Removing the carpet reveled floors that are worn and scratched.   In general the floors are in good shape.  The flooring is tight and there was only minimal water damage in a few spots. 40 year old finishes are not as durable as today's urethane finishes.  The carpet tack strips left behind a ring of nail holes along all the walls.  Sanding, filling and varnishing has made all the old rooms look new again.  But there where a few spots in the floor with large gashes in the oak.  I did not want to have to replace the whole plank to fix the small damaged area's.  Instead I drilled out the damaged spots and filled with plugs made from new Oak flooring.

Damaged floor and plug for making the repair.  Forstner bit is exact size of plug which was cut with a round mortise cutter.

Make a drill guide to keep the Forstner bit from wandering. The drill guide is half inch plywood and is large enough that I could hold it in place with my foot while starting the whole.

Finish drilling the hole to 1/4" depth.

After the plug is glued in place I trimmed the top of the plug with a flexible Japanese hand saw.  Be careful not to mark the floor with the saw.

Sanded with a 5 inch palm sander to make the plug flush with the surrounding area.

Makethe plugs with a round mortise cutting bit in a drill press. The large plugs have to be removed buy cutting them out of the material. 3/8 tapper plugs were used to fix smaller flaws in the floor like nail holes or flaws to big for filler. I used several pieces of oak flooring to cut the plugs from. I would match the grain and color of the original floor to my scrape collection.  Light/dark oak, broad or tight grain. 

The  finished repair after varnishing the floor.