Photos of what you have please. And how old were the vinyl tiles?

Not sure of age but vinyl and slate are gone. The mastic is the issue now. Haven't seen an easy way to do it yet.

Scalding hot water.

Thx Joe I did try warm water but not scalding. It was a very muddy mess and I got concerned about ruining the oak floor. How long did you let the water sit? I did see some put cat litter down when scaping to absorb the mud. Your thoughts please.

Use a shredder disc. It will remove the mastic without gouging the wood floor. Sanding will need to start with 36 grit

G & S floor Is this shredder disc something you buy at home depot and put on a floor sander you can rent? Thank you!

Home Depot have a daimabrush disc that you can rent for a buffer. You can also get a 5” disc for a angle grinder. Do be careful, daimabrush can gouge your wood floors.

You can Also use diamond cup wheels. There are wheels designed to scrape off mastic.

shredder wheel is also available for angle grinders, but will be a special order.

Look for granite and concrete grinding suppliers in your area For specialty wheels. Not sure if, Granquartz is located in your area. But you can search them up online.

Take the water boiling off the stove and pour it on the mastic please.

We had good luck with ammonia dissolving ours. Only discovered that this worked when we spilled a bottle of windex on it by accident. But it was still a muddy mess to clean.

Mineral spirits would likely work but I don't think anything will remove it without either making a mess or requiring it to be refinished after.

Use liquid/chemical methods, rather than abrasive removal methods, unless you have already tested the mastic to be sure it doesn't contain asbestos fibers. Abrasive methods can put large amounts of asbestos fibers in the air.

Dump a pot of boiling hot water on the floor.

Scrub it with a floor scrubber. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072KDRZNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And vacuum it all up with a wet vac.

Repeat.

Thank you all for your suggestions. The mastic layer was so thick , we hand scrapped off the whole top 1/2 inch then rented the sander and bought the diamabrush disc as suggested by g & s floor (thx so much). Tried everything suggested, nothing worked except this grinding method and scraping, because of the thickness. It was still sooo much work. Now we can do patching, lightly sand, buff, then poly it. It will be a few weeks til we can get back to it.