I finished the shaping portion of some fluted columns last night and
ran into a problem when it same time to sand out the char marks my
router bit left in the wood.

I was routing the flutes in 8' 1x4 red oak, and while my long runs
were pretty good (only 4-5 char marks over 14 7 foot flutes), I still
charred up about half of the beginning and end of the flutes. The
magazine I got the fluting jig out of said to shape a section of hack
saw blade to the flute and scrape the charred wood out.

Well, I tried that and it worked decently where the burn marks were in
the middle of a run, but at the cupped beginning and ends, it was
horrible. I scraped and scraped and got nowhere. I eventually wound up
putting a 1/4" sanding disc from my dremel kit into my drill and
carefully sanding them until the charred wood was sanded away.

Now I know the best way to take care of this is to not let it happen
in the first place, but is there a better way to sand those areas? I
thought about taking the router to it and just barely tapping the
bottom, but I didn't want to risk messing up the whole thing in an
attempt to take care of a little charred wood.

Thanks,
Nathan