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Hello everyone,
I am currently working on a project which involves the pictured piece of driftwood. So far I have been cleaning the wood manually with sand paper, but this is quite slow and exhausting. What type of (preferably consumer grade) tools can I use to speed up the process?
What kind of cleaning are you trying to accomplish?
If you just want to remove dirt and debris, use a nylon bristle brush. If you want to remove loose splinters from the surface, use a brass wire brush. If you want to scrub the surface down to accept stain/finish without completely smoothing out the original texture, use a steel wire brush.
You can get brushes like these at any hardware store
If you do need to sand the surface smooth, consider a sanding sponge:
This will wrap around the curves and ride over the bumps and won't tear up like sandpaper. You can also wet sand with it.
I want to remove the grime and leftover bark pieces and later apply some finish to bring out the texture.
Oh, yeah for removing the loose bark you probably want to do the steel wire first, then the nylon to remove any dust or small flakes. You could also do steel wool, but depending on how rough the surface is it might shred and leave little bits behind.
For an irregular surface like this you might also consider spray polyurethane for finishing, it will be easier to apply and the surface doesn't have to be perfectly smooth.
scraping, and not sanding, is the trick. You use the sandpaper to finish.
don't use your favorite knife. Knots and sand and any other debris pushed from the side chips the edge. A cheap and blunt knife can be enough.
good luck
ps: please post a photo when you finish the project.
I'd go with a wire brush wheel that you can chuck in to a drill. A set like this will give you lots of options on the cheap.
For similar project I used angle grinder shaping disc.
Those scare me quite a bit. Seems like you would more control with a drill attachment, although not as much power/rpm obviously.
I use the bristle brushes but in drill bit form. I've also got a bunch of Roloc^TM sanding bits for my m12 polisher. I've mostly used it on cherry and walnut offcuts from the garden. Careful with driftwood as it's often very soft / light weight wood that power tools might rip through.
Maybe a file sander would work.
OK so you had loads of good advice, but I've done a very similar clean up on a branch, and I have the cheapest option to recommend: I've debarked my branch with a nail.
The flat head of the nail can be used to 'crowbar' some pieces of bark, by leveraging the length of the nail to apply pressure. You can also use the side of the head to push off bark from knots and the side of the branch.
To finish on my projects, I had to eventually use a metal file mill + sand paper. I intend to do more projects like this so I'll almost assuredly get some of the tools listed in here, tho.
random orbit sander
An orbit sander either requires a flat surface, or it will involuntarily create one.
You can use an interface pad.
If it's bark or shaving it down, a drawknife is a perfect tool.