Hand sanding questions

V

Vincent Price

Joined
Feb 28, 2020
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so on advice from a few here I've watched a few videos by Nick Wheeler on hand sanding. I've began to notice that quite a few knife makers do things in various different orders. On my most recent build I put in my initial bevel while forging and straightened it out during the rough grind. After heat treat I ran my bevel up free hand grind from 60 to 120 grit to where I was satisfied with it. Then I clamped it to the bench and began to hand sand with a few push sticks and sticky backed sand papers that mr. Wheeler suggested and as you can guess I blew my nice bevels with scratches as careful as I tried not to. So now I'll have to go back to shop tomorrow and carefully try to clean those up again carefully on the grinder.

How do you more experiences guys do your process?
 
if your hand sanding is creeping over the edges onto the machine finish, either you are tipping your sanding block and rocking it or your paper is not tight enough around the sanding block and its hanging over the edge. try doing the final grit on your main bevels last, after hand sanding to see if that works.
 
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john april said:
if your hand sanding is creeping over the edges onto the machine finish, either you are tipping your sanding block and rocking it or your paper is not tight enough around the sanding block and its hanging over the edge. try doing the final grit on your main bevels last, after hand sanding to see if that works.
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Thanks. I'll give that a try. As usual its all a learning process. It wasn't long ago I couldn't freehand grind at all, just have to do it a million times. Same will apply here.
 
What john said. As flat as you think you are off the belt grinder, its probably not very flat, at least not for me. When you get a truly flat surface with the sanding blocks, you'll definitely 'feel' it. To me, it feels like the paper is grabbing more, almost a bit 'sticky'. I still occasionally have to go back a grit or two to better establish the flat at some spots and then re-do the grit progression but if you are using adhesive backed paper and a good, flat sanding block, your line will remain crisp on each direction change without any problem.
 
If you are going to 120 on the grinder, then to hand sanding, what grit are you starting with?
I can start my hand sanding at 320 to 400 because I get a finer finish off the grinder than 120.
Mine would be closer to 340 off the grinder.
I lower grit (120 to 220) on the bench could be difficult to keep flat.
 
I do not hand sand to remove material. I hand sand to put in a nice scratch pattern.

My sequence is 50 grit, 120, 220, 400, 400 cork green compound, 800 cork green compound and then I hand sand back to 600 grit finish.

If I find any deep scratches I go back to the grinder to remove them, I do not do it by hand sanding. Once the deep scratch is remove I work back up the grits on the grinder then on to hand sanding.

I rather spend time removing scratches on the grinder then by hand
 
This here. As much as possible I try to get past the grit I want on the grinder then back up one step for the scratch pattern I want. Low speeds help. Also you have a harder time on the grinder alternating scratch directions like you can by hand but I can do something similar if I switch from belt grinder to disc grinder. Helps avoid having to go back 2 steps most of the time.

I've ran up the grits from 120 to 2400 back to a clean 1200 grit one to many times by hand to want to do that :)

I use the buffer when hand sanding scales/handles to look for issues as well. Do a quick buff between grits. You'll see where you missed a scratch. For me it's mostly on inside curves.
 
AVigil said:
I do not hand sand to remove material. I hand sand to put in a nice scratch pattern.

My sequence is 50 grit, 120, 220, 400, 400 cork green compound, 800 cork green compound and then I hand sand back to 600 grit finish.

If I find any deep scratches I go back to the grinder to remove them, I do not do it by hand sanding. Once the deep scratch is remove I work back up the grits on the grinder then on to hand sanding.

I rather spend time removing scratches on the grinder then by hand
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What kind of belts do you use for the 220 and 400?
 
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