Katherine JohnsonHemp fibers are among the strongest materials grown in Kentucky. Developments have allowed farmers to experiment with making hemp into rope, even clothing. At the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment’s North Farm, UK Cooperative Extension Professor Bob Pearce led a project to turn their hemp crop into flooring.
Pearce had worked with Kentucky company HempWood in the past and seen its flooring product up close. He knew quickly he wanted to bring this process to North Farm so his students could participate and learn alongside him.
“In a lot of the work we do, once the product is sold off the farm, we don’t see what happens to it,” Pearce said. “In this instance we were able to see it go from the field to the finished product.”
In 2022, North Farm had some large hemp plantings, which inspired Pearce to reach out to HempWood. Now, every day when he walks into work, he is reminded of the fruits of his and his students’ labor.
To create the flooring, the hemp stalk is crushed to open the cell structure, then dipped into a soy glue. It is then dried like tobacco and pressed into a block shape, resulting in a dense block. The pattern of the floor is determined by the method the blocks are cut; horizontally results in a live sawn grain and vertically in a rift & quarter sawn grain. It is then laid up on a PureBond® plywood backer using soy glue to make a durable flooring 20% harder than hickory.
