Abrasives

Abrasives do just what it sounds like they do: they rub at a material to either clean it, remove it, or to create certain effects – most often used in fashion and architecture. Remember the first (and perhaps the last) time you bought a pair of stone-washed jeans? The effect achieved there is by adding minerals, sometimes pumice stones, to the mix in the final stage of manufacture. Distressed furniture is treated with abrasives to make it look ‘lived in’.

But not all abrasives are used in such glamorous industries. Typically, companies that manufacture abrasives deal in cut-off discs, rigid grinding discs, ceramic grinding discs, sandpaper, grinding wheels and buffing pads. The latter, because not all abrasives are designed to take away large amounts of material. A buffing pad is meant to add the finishing touches to a product, whether it’s a leather belt or a glass-smooth, pink granite surface.

Abrasives may be classified as either natural or synthetic. You probably have a knife sharpener in the kitchen, perhaps a stone, and natural sharpening stones have long been considered superior. But advances in material technology are seeing this distinction become less distinct. Many synthetic abrasives are effectively identical to a natural mineral, differing only in that the synthetic mineral has been manufactured rather than been mined. Impurities in natural minerals may make them less effective.

From the house you live in, to the clothes you wear and the polished floor you walk on, abrasives play a major part in our lives, often without us knowing it. The next time you use a pencil eraser, or scrub away with a scouring pad at a pan, remember that you’re relying on the power of abrasives to make life easier.