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We are not inclined to classify that lowly abrasive, the sandpaper, nor its many relatives, as tools. However, if we define tools as devices which either simplify or enable a manufacturing operation to proceed, certainly sandpaper is a tool and therefore worthy of our consideration.
The Chronicle has carried several valuable references to sandpaper, but neither here nor in other references have I thus far found a description of its early manufacture nor its antiquity. The present article therefore is prompted by the discovery several years ago of a building at Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, where during the middle 1800s sandpaper was made and widely sold.
Sandpaper belongs to that class of tools which by their grinding or abrasive action reduce or smooth a wooden, metal, or other surface. To these tools belong the steel file, the rasp, the powdered abrasives, either by themselves or when affixed to paper, cloth, or other material, certain animal or fish skins, Dutch reeds (a vegetable growth containing particles of silicates) and, of course, our modern steel wool. Close relatives to these are the burnishing tools of steel or semi-precious stones set in wooden handles and which do not abrade but smooth a surface by compression. Other relatives are the grindstone and the whetstone, but since their purpose is chief ly to sharpen the edge of a tool, we will not treat of them here.
The antiquity of the abrasive reduction of a surface for the purposes of shaping, polishing, and sharpening must be nearly contemporary with man's first tools. For in the artifacts of primitive man, we find ample evidence of abrasive tooling, the use of one stone against another being probably the earliest, since rubbing stones are found among the artifacts themselves. The introduction of sand between the rubbing surfaces or alone was an obvious discovery. Early man also discovered that for fine polishing of his tools and utensils, the blades of certain grasses containing sharp particles of silicates were useful. The dried skins of mammals or fish such as the seal, dogfish, or shark were found to have similar qualities and are available even to this day for fine polishing.
The file and rasp were early inventions and in common use by the Romans. A...