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.