Advice on hand sanding...

[KillerDr3w]

Hi Folks,

The only thing I've ever hand sanded with wet and dry is a aluminium points cover from a motorbike, and wet and dry made easy work on that - I could almost scoop metal out with the wet and dry in a few strokes! So I was quite surprised last night when I started hand sanding this blade to see how little impact I'm having on it.

I'm using silicone carbide paper, and was working with between 80 and 400 grit last night - I only moved to 400 to see if it made a difference (despite what the wiki says!), using warm soapy water. I have't built a permament sanding rig yet, bit I was using a make-shift one made from two wooden blocks.

I've read the wiki, and realise that I need to stay on low-grit, my post is more about how long I it should take.

After about 2 hours, my blade looked like this:



You can see from the first picture, all the rust and dark stains have gone, but you can see where a dark stain was circled in red was and has left a pattern on the blade, and some pitting circled in blue - the second picture give a better idea of how deep this is. There is also a lot of patterened pitting on the tang, despite it looking not bad.

How long does it take to get damage like this out? I was working for an hour and a half, I felt like I was hardly removing moving metal at all last night - the the point of me not being convinced I was! The metal is so hard compared to anything I've worked on before. I can still see a lot of areas I need to work on.

Thanks,

kD

[osdset]

Try hand sanding a LeGrelot, you will soon know what torture is all about.

[cutalot]

well if you realy want to get it out quite a long time.hard to tell how deep it is from the pics. are you just useing your fingers to back the sandpaper? if so try a stiff piece of leather treat your sandpaper like it was free and go light.let the sandpaper do the work. i cut a strip of paper as wide as my leather backing fold it over and just use the edge, moving the paper as it wears

[baldy]

If you really want to get rid of the pitting dont move up grits until its gone. maybe go back to 180-200 and get rid of the damage you want to get rid of.
Then all the remaining sanding is just getting rid of the scratch marks from the previous grit.
On another note, given the location if the pitting your talking about, just be careful you dont sand down the spine in that spot, that can cause honing problems.
Grant
Edit: Its not unusual to spend quite a few hours handsanding a blade, depending on the condition of course

[KillerDr3w]

I noticed I'd dulled the edge on the spine on one spot, I managed to sand back the sharpness so its not really noticable, and I've changed the way I was sanding and am coming in at an angle to the spine now, so hopefully I won't do anything else.

I'll go back to 200 and give it a few more hours. I think my problem is more the difference between my expectations based on aliminium and what I was getting on this steel I don't mind taking time, but at one point I was even looking to see if the wet and dry I had was ment for wood or something!

I'll try a bit of leather or a sponge or something around the paper too. Thanks folks. I'll post an update when I manage to get this ready for putting scales on

[Bruno]

The wiki says what it says for a good reason
If you jump to higher grits without having polished out pitting and the scratch marks of the previous grit, your work is just going to take much more time.
Also, Aluminium and 60 HRc steel... not really a comparison. If you are handsanding a good razor, it can take as much as 10 hours or more.

[EisenFaust]

When something like that happens it can be very hard to remove with straight hand sanding - fingers tend to dip into any shallows and accentuate them. To fix it you will have to span the shallow using a sanding block until its all leveled out.

[KillerDr3w]

Ah! I get you. A sponge would probably cause the same issues. I'll see if I can improvise a longish sanding block to remove the edge of the shallow.

[jeffegg2]

I used the kitchen sponge, but I did not focus on the pits, instead just kept sanding the whole thing until the pits were gone...

Jeff.

[KillerDr3w]

Thanks to the advice here, I've got the shallows out!

I wrapped dowling wood in some 80 and 120 grit paper, and rubbed back and forth over the whole blade, and eventually the shallows disappeared.

The blades looking really good now, all the pitting, stains and rust has gone. My only dissapintment is that I've made the writing on the blade a little bit too soft in areas, so I'm not sure if I should remove it totally, or leave what I have (opinions?). Over the next week or so I'll start moving up the wet and dry grits to get a mirror finish on it

One more question I have - should I be able to see any scratches at all on it when I'm finished with the 1500, or does the metal polish take the final lot of scratches out?



I quite pleased with how its going so far considering this is my first restore I need a set of scales, pin set and someone to hone sharpen it in the UK now - I've never done that myself so I could really use a professional to do it so I know what sort of edge I'm supposed to have - I'll get some Naniwa ‘Super Stones’ for my next restore and try honing it myself.

Thanks to everyone who's given me advice so far