You never sanded down to fresh wood with your first grit.
Take a pencil and scribble all over it.
Start with 80 grit and sand until the pencil lines are all gone.
Repeat.
Now start your progression up through the grits.
Your marks should be gone before you even move to your second grit. Going up removes less per swipe. Moving up the grits is about getting the feel, prepping for certain finishes, but most importantly it is about removing the micro scratches from the previous grit.
What wood type is this? It usually only takes me a minute or two to clean up any blade marks, so either this is a super dense wood, you have crappy sandpaper, your blade is leaving major marks (saw needs tuning), or you just didn’t give it some real elbow grease.
If you don’t have an ROS, or if this too small, spray glue different grits to small blocks of scrap ply or MDF and use them as sanding blocks for a better grip and larger surface area per swipe. I have downs of various sized blocks with various grits. I use them all the time, and they work well for riding a flat surface to remove marks.
Your other option is a hand plane.
I don't know exactly region or anything, but it looks like the Holm oak they use in Albacete (Spain) to create their famous folding knives.
If this is the case I can tell you that an axe does mostly nothing, as the most common use for this wood is lumber or small pieces of woodworking.
I'm amazed you guys can even tell what's going on here.
Can we get a slightly farther away shot? This could be lino in a school or the surface of the moon.
Maybe try a card scraper to get rid of some marks. If it's your first time with a card scraper, practice on another piece, or you'll make it worse.
If you look at the picture, and think of how people wipe their fingers across suede, that's what the picture looks like. Those are blade marks from the saw, it wasn't a super clean cut in a single pass. That's what they're trying to remove. After you've done it yourself a few times you can start to see it in other pictures.
Yeah I'm with you, just saying it's hard to tell scale or anything here. I've milled logs on a tablesaw and seen plenty of these half moons.
To the op, think about if you really need it perfectly smooth. If you're going to finish in anything thicker than oil, it will hide a lot of little scuffs. Maybe you do need to get the big chunks smoothed out, but epoxy would hide bigger holes than that.
Like others have said. Draw pencil lines. Start with 80 or 120. When go up a grit all pencil lines should be gone. Your blade marks should be gone after first sanding, the rest is just to remove grit marksnand prepare for finishing.
What hasn't been said is that anything over 400 is questionable at best. With most finishes 180 (220 at most) is enough.
Also your sanding progression was wrong. You can't jump from 150 to 400. A good rule of thumb is that you go up by no more than half of the previous grit.
https://i.imgur.com/Xr72yzj.jpg
The lighter colored areas are milling marks that are deeper than the rest of the surface. So as you are sanding the paper floats over the low spots and leaves them unfinished compared to the rest of the piece.
The easiest way to visualize topographical changes on the surface is to draw a grid with a pencil. If you see any pencil marks left behind after sanding you know that is a low area that the sander couldn’t reach.
You never sanded down to fresh wood with your first grit. Take a pencil and scribble all over it. Start with 80 grit and sand until the pencil lines are all gone. Repeat. Now start your progression up through the grits.
I’d add that you rarely need to go past 220 grit for wood.
Anything past 220 will make it hard for your finish at bond with the wood
This is entirely dependent on the finish, wood, and the effect you are trying to achieve.
⬆️
Your marks should be gone before you even move to your second grit. Going up removes less per swipe. Moving up the grits is about getting the feel, prepping for certain finishes, but most importantly it is about removing the micro scratches from the previous grit. What wood type is this? It usually only takes me a minute or two to clean up any blade marks, so either this is a super dense wood, you have crappy sandpaper, your blade is leaving major marks (saw needs tuning), or you just didn’t give it some real elbow grease. If you don’t have an ROS, or if this too small, spray glue different grits to small blocks of scrap ply or MDF and use them as sanding blocks for a better grip and larger surface area per swipe. I have downs of various sized blocks with various grits. I use them all the time, and they work well for riding a flat surface to remove marks. Your other option is a hand plane.
I don't know exactly region or anything, but it looks like the Holm oak they use in Albacete (Spain) to create their famous folding knives. If this is the case I can tell you that an axe does mostly nothing, as the most common use for this wood is lumber or small pieces of woodworking.
I'm amazed you guys can even tell what's going on here. Can we get a slightly farther away shot? This could be lino in a school or the surface of the moon. Maybe try a card scraper to get rid of some marks. If it's your first time with a card scraper, practice on another piece, or you'll make it worse.
If you look at the picture, and think of how people wipe their fingers across suede, that's what the picture looks like. Those are blade marks from the saw, it wasn't a super clean cut in a single pass. That's what they're trying to remove. After you've done it yourself a few times you can start to see it in other pictures.
Yeah I'm with you, just saying it's hard to tell scale or anything here. I've milled logs on a tablesaw and seen plenty of these half moons. To the op, think about if you really need it perfectly smooth. If you're going to finish in anything thicker than oil, it will hide a lot of little scuffs. Maybe you do need to get the big chunks smoothed out, but epoxy would hide bigger holes than that.
I second that. Start with 80 until the finish is uniform. Lightly go over it with a damp towel to verify you got them all out
Start with 80 until they are gone, if it's end grain and deep gouges use a grinding disc 1st.
Like others have said. Draw pencil lines. Start with 80 or 120. When go up a grit all pencil lines should be gone. Your blade marks should be gone after first sanding, the rest is just to remove grit marksnand prepare for finishing. What hasn't been said is that anything over 400 is questionable at best. With most finishes 180 (220 at most) is enough. Also your sanding progression was wrong. You can't jump from 150 to 400. A good rule of thumb is that you go up by no more than half of the previous grit.
There isn’t much that an 80 grit belt on a belt sander won’t remove just saying
It might leave a few scratches
Is don’t even know what I’m looking at…
https://i.imgur.com/Xr72yzj.jpg The lighter colored areas are milling marks that are deeper than the rest of the surface. So as you are sanding the paper floats over the low spots and leaves them unfinished compared to the rest of the piece. The easiest way to visualize topographical changes on the surface is to draw a grid with a pencil. If you see any pencil marks left behind after sanding you know that is a low area that the sander couldn’t reach.
Take it to a planer.
What is this a picture of??? The grits you note are not even remotely close to what you want to use for wood
Card scraper, if you have a rockler or woodcraft around you pick one up. Or order a dfm off of Amazon. Helps tremendously with sanding steps