"Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

11/9/05, 2:46 AM #1

John Aniano, in NJ, somewhere...
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"Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

John Aniano, in NJ, somewhere...

>Hello Folks,

I had recently been rereading a really good Dover reprint book on painting - "The Craftsman�s Handbook" by Cennino Cennini, and he suggested using pumice stones to smooth wood panels to prepare them prior to painting them. Which got me thinking. So...

I placed an order with Kremer Pigments and just today got the bag of pumice stones (Italian origin, 3-5cm long). A lifetime supply. They looked pretty rough...

Selected one of them, rubbed it hard on the concrete apron to my garage to roughly flatten one side and then truly flattened the pumice surface by rubbing on a diamond stone. I then used the flattened pumice stone to smooth some very hard wood (swartzia sp.) and it worked pretty well. Seemed to work better with some thin lubrication oil that I normally use when sanding with wet-or-dry paper.

Has anyone else out there tried using pumice stones like these to surface wood? Any suggestions, or am I completely on my own here?

John

Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

11/9/05, 3:20 AM #2

Bill Houghton
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Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>If I recall correctly, pumice powder is one of the compounds used classically for rubbing out finishes, and people use pumice stones for rubbing off calluses on their feet - so why not wood?

Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

11/9/05, 4:30 AM #3

William Duffield, on the Cohansey
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Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>You could save another step. Use BLO, shellac and alcohol as the lubricant. :^)

Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

11/9/05, 3:02 PM #4

George Makowski
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Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

George Makowski

>John, Sanding with pumice stones was one of the standard methods for cleaning at least utility wood surfaces. On boats and ships, this is what were called "Holy Stones" bacause you knelt on the deck with one in front of you sanding the deck clean. I remember one we kept in our home on Long Island as a curiosity. It was about 6" long and shaped like 1/2 of a teardrop with two finger grooves on the top for a better grip. On reflection, it wasn't big enough for a deck stone, so it probably was used for general sanding on wooden boats there on Great South Bay. So I don't see why you couldn't use pumice stones for other wood preparation if you could find ones that had the right "grit" to them.

George in AL

Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

11/10/05, 7:03 AM #5

ThomD
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Re: "Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

ThomD

>I'm not saying you will have problems, but I lost several DMT stones to leveling other stones. Basicaly diamond is the hardest known material, but the stuff they glue the chrystals down with is so so.

"Sanding" wood with pumice stones...

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