When/whether to hand sand???

I'm going to ignore all the back and forth about the shiny, mis-ground spot on the blade and answer the question in the title. In my opinion, whether to hand sand or not is totally a question of what kind of knife you are making and what kind of knifemaker you want to be perceived as. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from Bruce Bingenheimer at my first show. He said, "If you want to sell to collectors, you need to hand finish your blades."

I took that advice to heart and hand finished every knife I made after that...until this year. I decided to produce a couple belt finished knives for the ICCE show in Ft. Worth. I still have both of them. In fact, I decided to carry one as my personal EDC but, the people who buy my knives don't want belt finished blades. They are willing to pay more for the hand finish but, I've reached a point in my knife making where, I don't have to charge more for a hand finish. I can come off the grinder at 600 grit, hand sand with 500 and then 800 and I'm done in ten minutes. I wont say never but, I don't see ever doing another machine finish on one of my folders; it just doesn't fit who I am as a knife maker.

Bob

My machine finished EDC
 
Last edited:
JTknives said:
Maybe I misread the thread, are we fighting? And who’s side am I on?
Click to expand...
Lol .. i am not sure myself :-) i think we need to come back to what stacy said and recognize that the grinder just is not that controlled a device, and what others have said that even at 200 or 300 grit you can lose / gain a mil of surface height in a spot for the smallest of reasons. Maybe it is just expecting too much of a grinder above, say, 220 grit, to maintain a blemish-free surface? Maybe that is the answer to the thread title? If you want to go higher than that, you gotta hand sand?? Kinda makes sense - all processes have their limits...
 
Cushing H. said:
Lol .. i am not sure myself :) i think we need to come back to what stacy said and recognize that the grinder just is not that controlled a device, and what others have said that even at 200 or 300 grit you can lose / gain a mil of surface height in a spot for the smallest of reasons. Maybe it is just expecting too much of a grinder above, say, 220 grit, to maintain a blemish-free surface? Maybe that is the answer to the thread title? If you want to go higher than that, you gotta hand sand?? Kinda makes sense - all processes have their limits...
Click to expand...
You can get a good finish with a grinder but it takes a lot of practice. Don't be to hard on your self, you will find a way to make it work. Like we talked about you have a great place to come from with understanding how things work. When you are trying to get a finish and contouring of a blade to be within a couple of thousandths you have to educate your hands and that takes time. You would not pick up a musical instrument and play it well right away. Getting a good finish off the grinder helps even if you still hand sand. For many people hand sanding is how they get a very high level of fit and finish by brute force. Even if they dont have the grinder skills they can still make a high end product but it takes time.
 
Oh goodness... I'm certainly not fighting. Perhaps my delivery is a bit dry and seems confrontational. I promise that is not my intent.
 
I'd also like to say that trizact belts are basically magic. They give an amazing finish for how fast they cut.
 
tkroenlein said:
Oh goodness... I'm certainly not fighting. Perhaps my delivery is a bit dry and seems confrontational. I promise that is not my intent.
Click to expand...
No worries at all :-) . I think a lot of good perspectives have been brought out here - and you have all given valuable things to look for, depending on approach - thank you all.

My new 320 / 420 belts are now in. Im really curious whether the new / sharp belt approach will change things (if at all). Will post the result
 
Ok - I promised an update. I received in a new set of belts (Amazon "red label" AO, "knifemakers" quality (though they say nothing about what that means)) in the range of 180-800 grit. The knife in question was already at 220 grit (no blemishes) - but I ran it at the 220 level again using these new belts, then ran it up the grits using a permanent marker between steps to assure removal of previous grit marks. The sequence I used was 220, 320, 600, 800 (I skipped the 420 I had received, using the "double the grit level" approach). All was perfectly fine, no more of these "fuzzy" spots (which previously started appearing at 320 grit). At 800 grit I started seeing what I would call uneven grinding down the middle of the blade with lack of removal of the 600 grit marks (picture below):
upload_2019-8-28_12-48-56.png
Very different appearance from the "fuzzy" patch I saw before - pretty clearly (to me at least) lack of removal of underlying scratches down the middle of the blade flat. Lesson learned (as others have said): use fresh belts (especially at the finer grits)!

I tried to take this up to 800 just to see what would happen. In reality I am realizing that for many of the knives I will make (kitchen or "user" field knives), the minute you clean them (for example using a scotch-bright pad in the kitchen), you will impart some scratches to the surface. Right now, to me, a 220 or 320 grit grind, followed by a medium scotchbright belt makes a lot of sense..... (except for showpieces/collectables, which I do not plan on doing!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top