To sand or not to sand

[Hammock]

I have a feeling, I might be starting something.

I was just wondering why some of us sand our spoons and kuksa etc and some of us don't. I sand, and love the look it gives, but many don't and having seen your pictures of both, am I begining to wonder why. So I thought it would be interesting to find out......

 

[Dave Budd]

sharp knives and a bit of practice means that you don't need to sand. IMO if you need to sand then you need more carving practice, but then there are times when sanding is the best way to produce certain effects (brings out some woody character and some shapes). Personally I got fed up with laboriously sanding and then wetting/drying/resanding to get the raised grain away before I could use the spoon/cup comfortably.

 

[Shewie]

I can carve a useable spoon if I need one on a trip, if it's going to be a keeper then it'll get sanded down when I get home.

I suppose an unsanded one is WIP for me, looking at somebody's work like Robin and I'd happily use on of their carved ones.

 

[Tiley]

I'd be inclined to sand the bowl bit of a spoon purely for a perhaps gentler 'mouth feel' but I also realise the arguments against this, including the inevitable fraying that does occur on the edges of sanded objects. With the best will in the world, I'd love to say that carving techniques should be enough to produce a decently smooth finish but, with so many other skills to practise and so much other information to garner and process, sanding is the expedient way of achieving a decent finish. On kuksas, I reckon that a rough (i.e. carved) finish on the outside is really nice in the hand but, again, I think that sanding is the preferred option on the interior. As ever, it's down to personal choice!

 

[Stringmaker]

I always sand; it helps that I have access to unlimited supplies of any grade of abrasive I need too.

My spoon carving (that's all I've done so far) is competent enough to produce something that functions as a spoon, but to me it looks unfinished unless it is sanded. There is also the question of time; the fine finishing of a shape is quicker and easier to do by sanding.

 

[robin wood]

It is personal choice but there are also many factors that folk don't consider or understand.

What many folk do is sand their work and it feels smooth, then they use it and find that after washing a few times it is no longer smooth and silky but rough and fluffy. What is happening here is the abrasive is abrading the fibres not cutting them and the dust fills the pores leaving a surface that feels smooth to the touch. Now we wash it, the dust washes out and the abraded fibres fluff up and swell revealing the true surface you have created, not very nice.

So there are 2 alternatives to the poor sanded finish. A good sanded finish means going down through the grits in steps using each grit to totally remove all the scratches produced by the previous grits. I would take this down to min 320 grit but better 600. Then you wash it to wash out the dust and fluff the fibres, let it dry. Now sand very lightly, this is important, you are trying to cut off the fluffed fibres without exposing a new layer of wood which will need wetting again. You can repeat the wetting dryng and sanding gently a few times if you like. Then oil and whilst saturated with oil use your finest paper again to sand gently with lots of oil about to carry away the dust. Finally wipe off and allow to dry. This gives a silky smooth finish that will stay that way when washed but it takes forever. The other danger is that unless careful with your technique all that sanding can round off all the features of your carving so everything ends up looking a bit jelly mould.

If you are good you can achieve a clean cut surface straight from a razor sharp knife in a single process that will stay that way when washed, if you can do it it is far nicer.
John Ruskin said "never imagine there is reason to be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sandpaper"

 

[Baggy]

I have been asking myself the same question so here are my rambling thoughts so far...

When I have finished carving I have a choice of leaving a tooled finish or sanding the surfaces smooth. I actually like a sanded finish, I like the way that it shows off the wood and I like the velvety feel. But a great tooled finish is a delight to see.

I attempt to carve in a traditional way using hand tools, some that I made myself,

So the question, for me is, how traditional is sanding (or similar)?

There are many natural material that are or can be made abrasive and it appears that they have been used for a long time. I was especially interested in the bones and deer antler that are thought to have been made smooth before having images of animals scored into them thousands of years ago. This was not sandpaper of course but the process would be similar to the long periods that I spend sitting and smoothing wood.

There are records of medieval carpenters and joiners using dog fish skin as an abrasive or “sandpaper” on wood.
Probably the earliest mention of “sandpaper” is from 13th Century China. The abrasive was made from crushed shells, sand and even seeds which were stuck to parchment using natural gum.

Early bow makers are thought to have used wet sand in leather to pull the wood through to make a smooth surface.
So there are natural abrasives which it seem have been used throughout history and the natural abrasive materials have also been adapted, ground and made to be used.

Other natural abrasive include:

Rottenstone is a soft, weathered, limestone, used in powder form as a abrasive. initial "sanding" of wood was done with a powdered pumice stone, final polishing/fine sanding was done with rottenstone

Scouring rush (Equisetum ),. A plant that has been on the planet for a hundred million years.

Sand on wet leather, powdered garnet, powdered quartz etc.

From the above I think that it is fair for me to claim that sanding (abrading) wood surfaces
could have been, and probably was, a traditional technique.


But....

Swapping emails with some friends about traditional sanding produced this comment;
” It takes such a long time to sand wood even with modern abrasives that I would have thought only very high class stuff was ever sanded, after all wood doesn't need to be sanded to do its job or to look good, why spend the time on it? “

Good question.
(My friends were too kind to mention the high level of skill required to get a great tooled finish)

Speaking for myself I like the look and feel of the sanded finish but I aspire to the wonderful tooled finish that the great carvers achieve

 

[robin wood]

Interesting thoughts. I personally am not tied to doing things the way they were done in any particular historical period unless doing museum replicas. But if you are interested in that then the vast majority of woodwork from the last 2000 years was produced with tooled unsanded finish. Neolithic, Bronze age and Iron age work often was abraded. I suspect this is a question of the difference of production by a skilled artisan for sale in market economy (tooled finish) as against more laborious production for personal use or trading with family and friends. This is what we find for instance in Scandinavia where south and central was market economy tooled finish and Sami work was traditionally made by the user and involves far more time consuming techniques.

There are examples of medieval woodwork with abraded or scraped finish eg mazers but they are very much in the minority. That all comes in the 18th and 19th C.

 

[Bigfoot]

Timeous thread for me, at a time when I am carving my first ever spoon out of a nice bit of beech. I haven't carved the bowl yet but was assuming I would need to sand to get that nice smooth finish, as my carving skills are primitive. So reading this thread has set me off on another learning curve

Now I think I will do two spoons and try a fully tooled version and a sanded version to see how I get on. For final finish, what does everyone else do - finish with a food safe oil? Will olive oil or vegetable oil do?

 

[JJJ]

That's a pretty comprehensive set of answers, personally I have no set way of deciding when to sand and when not to. It must be down to the properties of the wood, how it splits or splinters, whether the grain tears, if it keeps changing direction etc. It is easy to rely on wood like lime, but the challenge is often to use difficult attractive timbers. I enjoy how a 'tooled' finish can catch the light but equally like the depth of finish you can get on a smooth surface.

In traditional carving, whether with a knife or numerous profiles of gouges and chisels, the trick it to chose a tool that is the shape of the cut you would like to make. Whereas if you have a limited choice there is no doubt that Abranet can allow you to achieve fantastic finishes on any shaped surface, just remembering as Robin said to avoid the jelly mould look, may be by returning and carving the details again.

There is an alternative. A tool that can smooth awkward grains and convex or concave surfaces and that's the oft forgotten scraper. The cabinet scraper is the obvious example and easy to google., but making your own is easy. Old thin saw blades are good, but with bushcraft in mind, I use a discarded firesteel striker for spoon interiors, or various profiles cut from a set of flexible fillng blades bought from Poundland for bowls or Kuksas.

These produce probably the best finish possible in the shortest possible time. You can vary the hook on the edge to remove a lot of material or just the finest thin ribbons on even the most difficult wood.

 

[Stew]

I was going to ask about scrapers!

 

[forestwalker]

For final finish, what does everyone else do - finish with a food safe oil? Will olive oil or vegetable oil do?

Olive oil will go rancid eventually, so stay away from that. I use flax seed oil bought in the grocery store, which is thr same stuff as raw linseed oil, but intended for your salad dressing. And it will harden just the same way te linseed oil will. if I was needing largert quantities I'd get some of the good cold pressed stuff, but a bottle from the grocery store will last for many months of use, so I can't be bothered saving a little bit of money.

 

[Woodcutter2]

That's a pretty comprehensive set of answers, personally I have no set way of deciding when to sand and when not to. It must be down to the properties of the wood, how it splits or splinters, whether the grain tears, if it keeps changing direction etc. It is easy to rely on wood like lime, but the challenge is often to use difficult attractive timbers. I enjoy how a 'tooled' finish can catch the light but equally like the depth of finish you can get on a smooth surface.

In traditional carving, whether with a knife or numerous profiles of gouges and chisels, the trick it to chose a tool that is the shape of the cut you would like to make. Whereas if you have a limited choice there is no doubt that Abranet can allow you to achieve fantastic finishes on any shaped surface, just remembering as Robin said to avoid the jelly mould look, may be by returning and carving the details again.

There is an alternative. A tool that can smooth awkward grains and convex or concave surfaces and that's the oft forgotten scraper. The cabinet scraper is the obvious example and easy to google., but making your own is easy. Old thin saw blades are good, but with bushcraft in mind, I use a discarded firesteel striker for spoon interiors, or various profiles cut from a set of flexible fillng blades bought from Poundland for bowls or Kuksas.

These produce probably the best finish possible in the shortest possible time. You can vary the hook on the edge to remove a lot of material or just the finest thin ribbons on even the most difficult wood.

Can certainly second the cabinet scraper, easy to use (strong thumbs help!) the finish is second to none, cabinetmakers of the highest order swear by them and using them will quickly tell you which way awkward grain is going allowing you to make changes in the action but (usually) without slicing too deep and ruining the work

 

[plastic-ninja]

Flaxseed oil may be reasonably priced in Sweden my friend,but here it is the domain of the "foodie" and costs an arm and at least half a leg!
Hot peanut oil works as does rapeseed oil but linseed is still good.
As far as sanding I used to but now just use the knives I got from Ben Orford and Ray Iles.Excellent tools and a joy to use.
Not that I'm any good , of course!!
Simon

 

[robin wood]

Yep scrapers are good tools in fact I have spent all afternoon smoothing some 5" discs of sycamore with a scraper made from an old saw.

Info on finishing oils here http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-is-best-oil-for-treating-wood.html

 

[Hammock]

Interesting, thanks for letting me kow your opinions.

I'm now worried that my craftmanship and tools are not up to scratch, but I'd like to think that I have sanded because I wanted to rather than because I had to.....

I have certainly always found the finish achieved by sanding to be quite attractive, and done correctly has not resulted in "fluffing" when wet. Using abrasives up to 12000 grit produces a glass like finish which I have alway found attractive (albeit more for showcase or sale rather than bushcraft).

Still here goes, carving for a tooled finish is the next project. Pictures to follow. Meanwhile if anyone fancies posting their prize tooled finishes, i'd be grateful for a look to see what sounds like the craftmans finish of choice....

Thanks

 

[shaggystu]

Flaxseed oil may be reasonably priced in Sweden my friend,but here it is the domain of the "foodie" and costs an arm and at least half a leg!.........linseed is still good.......

aren't flaxseed oil and linseed oil the same thing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linseed_oil

stuart