Smoothing totes.

[Tim Put]

I've begun making handles for a niche tool for myself and some friends. The handles are based-on/inspired-by open handled saw totes:
233870

By far the most time-consuming part, and thus--with a dash of impatience--the part with the least satisfying results, is the intermediate smoothing. The smoothing immediately after I've shaped the handle by: gouging marked bevels, and then scraping and rasping to final shape, before more scraping and sanding.
In other words: removing tool-marks and small nicks or bits of tear out where the grain changes direction on a concave curve.

At the moment I use a couple of files, a sloyd knife, card scrapers, and tiny strips of sandpaper (which tear often) held against a thumb. The tight inside curves are a pain! Am I missing anything? Shaped sanding sticks? More files? More (and finer) rasps?

How do you all smooth totes (in particular, their inside curves)?

[glenn bradley]

I'm not much help as that is the part of hand shaping that I find most satisfying. Moving from the machined hoggin-out of material beyond the rasp and knife to the accentuating of grain patterns and burnishing here as opposed to there to achieve a nice balanced look. I do not hurry through this stage as it imparts a part of you into/onto the piece that quick-step, mass production methods cannot match.

All that ZEN blathering aside, I use fine rifflers, pieces of foam wrapped with high quality sand paper (if your paper is tearing, try a cloth backed abrasive product [Klingspor and others]), shaped hard rubber backers and so forth. It is not unusual for me to have half a dozen different utensils nearby depending if I am going uphill or down, inside or out, broad surface or crisp facet, etc. I have a lighted magnifying lamp fixture similar to what a carver might use but a bit larger in scale. This helps me to avoid fouling an area that was already "done" and now isn't anymore because I couldn't see it clearly. Material selection can also help out. Mahogany and other open grained woods don't lend themselves to highly detailed finish work the way beech or cherry might.

[Tony Shea]

I am of no help really. But I am curious what exactly this tool is. The handle is very well shaped btw.

Finishing off with the finest rasps you can get is the best way I've found of getting from the course tool marks into the final stages of smoothing. I hate to say it but fine sandpaper is the best tool I've found to give me smoothest results on tight curves such as saw handles. There really is nothing else I have on hand or know of that can replace fine sandpaper in this part of the shaping.

[David Weaver]

Dowels with sandpaper on them, it allows you to preserve detail. it's hard on the sandpaper, but in the scheme of things, the cost isn't too high. I usually go coarse rasp, fine rasp, double cut file, then sandpaper - usually something like 80 grit, then 220 grit.

There's no way I can think of to finish off that part of the work and do a nice job and do it really quickly (like machine quick or 10 minutes quick).

[Klaus Kretschmar]

Tim, there are some very unforgiving woods like Pear or Maple and some others that are hard to smooth and even harder to finish flawless. If you want to get a flawless result, you need to spend some more time on those difficult woods. It's absolutely necessary to do every step beginning with the first coarse rasping until the finest sanding that nicely that all marks from the previous step are gone. Cheat just once and this area never will become flawless. The inside curves are very critical areas. After the rasping I use a rather dull fine file just for removing the rasping marks on those critical areas.

While sanding the same rules are to be followed. Don't stop one grit before you aren't convinced to have removed all sanding marks from the previous grit. On the critical areas I don't know a better way than to use the sanding paper with a dowel.

Nice handle you show but... please forgive my ignorance... what kind of tool is that?

Klaus

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I'm guessing an espresso tamper?

Everything everyone else said plus one. The other trick that works for me sometimes is to pull a long, thin strip of sandpaper, holding it down under my thumb where I want the "action" to be - it can help concentrate the work in smaller area to remove an errant hump, but you need to be careful as it can remove wood fast, depending on how long the piece of paper is. As Klaus alluded to, good files can be a godsend. Sometimes chainsaw files can be handy. His advice about not jumping grits or coarseness of tool is key, as well.

Appropriately sized carving gouges can be the quickest way to get a nice surface if everything is behaving well and you've got the knack. They can also be the quickest way to ruin a perfectly good piece of work, though.

I've also got something like one of these (http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2000274/1744/24-Piece-Standard-Kit-Sanding-Sticks.aspx) kicking around and while it's curved the wrong way for a lot of what you want to do, (where a dowel would work better) when I need it for those little areas it excels at, it's very helpful.

[Tim Put]

I'm guessing an espresso tamper?

Bingo!

Thanks all.
I'm going to make another tomorrow. Obviously I won't have the opportunity to acquire any shiny new tools before then. But I'll take the gouge carving a little closer to final shape, and I'll try out the sandpaper-wrapper-round-a-dowel trick. I'll post how it goes.

[Ron Bontz]

When I am making saw handles and other odd shapes I use 3/4 to 1" wide emery cloth about 10 to 12" long. Start with 80 grit, 120, 220 if needed. Works well for me. Like buffing my shoes.:)

[Derek Cohen]

For inside curves - bearing in mind all the time that sandpaper is abrasive (duh!) and can alter dimensions instead of smoothing them - I will use strips of sanding belt. Simply pull these back-and-forth as though you were polishing shoes.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

If you go back to edge tools after sanding, also remember to brush off - working a guitar neck, I've had a loose piece of grit end up staying in the wood without realizing it and put a nice knick in my cutting edge of the spokeshave . . .

[Jim Koepke]

I've had a loose piece of grit end up staying in the wood without realizing it and put a nice knick in my cutting edge of the spokeshave . . .

You are lucky, mine always get nasty nicks...

jtk

[Tim Put]

For inside curves - bearing in mind all the time that sandpaper is abrasive (duh!) and can alter dimensions instead of smoothing them - I will use strips of sanding belt. Simply pull these back-and-forth as though you were polishing shoes.

Earlier I tried the shoe-shine method with some paper-backed sandpaper (with the expected result of tearing). After this post I tried with some sanding belt. In my hands I found the belts too stiff crosswise: the edges of the belt cut in leaving shallow gouges. Not having any cloth-backed sandpaper on hand, I tried some PSA-backed paper. The plastic adhesive cover kept the paper from tearing. I was impressed by the speed and results of the method. The small amount of unwanted rounding of the arris between the rounded top and bottom surfaces and the sides was easily restored by leaving the handle a smidge thick and planing down the sides after (maybe it's luck, maybe it's expensive sandpaper, but I've never had a problem with abrasives embedding in a workpiece).

I think I will take advantage of the LV free shipping to order a couple rolls of cloth backed sandpaper.

[Federico Mena Quintero]

That's one damn fine tamper! I have on with a turned handle, but yours just seems so *right* for this coffee-and-wood household.

[Ron Bontz]

Hey Tim. I always hold my cloth backed strips at an angle. When shining my shoes, to sort of speak, the sanding cloth moves forward and backward helping to prevent dig ins. Experiment a bit. Love the tamper, BTW.

[Tim Put]

Thanks.

That's exactly what I found using the PSA paper to shoe-shine: it worked best held at a bit of an angle, with a back-and-forth motion along the handle simultaneous with the scrubbing shoe-shine motion across the handle.
I have two rolls of cloth backed paper arriving from Lee Valley on Tuesday. Hopefully I can dive in and get a lot done when they arrive.

This is yet one more project making me itch for some incannel gouges. :o