Sandpaper

Sandpaper is an abrasive paper used to smooth and finish wood surfaces, and it’s a handy tool in wood carving. After you’ve done the cutting and carving, you’ll often have small tool marks or a rough texture on your piece – this is where sandpaper comes in. By rubbing the sandpaper on the wood, you sand the surface, gradually wearing away high spots and scratches until the wood feels smooth to the touch. Sandpaper comes in various grit sizes (the grit number indicates the coarseness: lower numbers are coarse and remove material quickly, while higher numbers are fine and polish the surface). For example, 80-grit sandpaper is fairly rough and good for initial smoothing, whereas 220-grit or 320-grit is quite fine and used for final finishing. In carving, you’ll typically start with a medium grit and progress to finer grits to achieve a clean result. This process prepares the wood for any finish (like oil or paint) and gives your project a more professional look.

For beginners in wood carving, sandpaper is an essential part of the toolkit because it helps clean up mistakes and refine details. When you’re just starting out, knife or chisel cuts might not be perfectly even – you might have fuzziness in the wood or small ridges. Using sandpaper can remove those minor imperfections and soften edges where needed. Many newcomers ask about the “best sandpaper for carving.” In practice, there isn’t a single best grit; rather, you’ll use a sequence of grits to get a smooth finish. For instance, you might begin with a coarse 80 or 100 grit to knock down rough spots, then use 150-180 grit to further smooth the surface, and finally finish with a fine grit like 220 or 320 for polishing. This progression from coarse to fine is key to efficiently smoothing your carving without scratching it up. Sanding is typically done by hand on carvings (especially if they are small or detailed), and you should sand with the grain of the wood when possible to avoid creating new scratches. One thing to note: while sandpaper greatly improves smoothness, over-sanding can blur fine details, so it’s a balance – you want to smooth the piece but not erase the character of your knife work.

BeaverCraft includes sandpaper in many of its carving kits and emphasizes the importance of finishing steps. For example, the BeaverCraft beginner kits often provide several strips of sandpaper in different grits, ensuring that a newcomer has everything needed not just to carve, but also to finish the project nicely. This is because BeaverCraft’s approach to carving is holistic – carving isn’t done when you put the knife down; it’s done when the piece is smooth and ready for display or use. By supplying sandpaper (and even teaching when to use it), BeaverCraft helps beginners learn good habits for finishing their carvings. Using the sandpaper from a BeaverCraft kit, you can gently sand your work (like a comfort bird or a small figurine) to remove knife marks and prepare the surface for applying a finish or paint. The supportive tone of BeaverCraft guides users to understand that sanding is not “cheating” but rather an important step in carving craftsmanship. With the right grit (or combination of grits) provided, even a first-time carver can take pride in a smooth, splinter-free final product. Over time, you’ll also learn which grits you prefer and how to achieve the finish that looks best to you. In short, sandpaper is the humble hero of finishing – and BeaverCraft makes sure beginners have this hero on hand to give their carvings a beautiful finishing touch.