First and foremost, I personally do not eat clams (they do not 'repulse' me, per se; I just don't like the texture), yet DH and youngest DS love them. 

I've twice attempted to make a baked clam appetizer (bacon, panko, butter containing hot sauce and shallots on the half-shell (next week I will attempt oreganata)) for them as a special treat.

I'm using fresh littlenecks (they've been on sale at my favorite grocery) - the first time I made them, I didn't pre-soak, just put them in the freezer for half hour to get a gap in the shells that I could squeeze a knife in.  They had quite a bit of sand; I was unable to scrape it off with a knife and had to rinse them to remove it (though it seems to me that this removes the natural juices).  Today, I looked on the internet and found a recommendation to soak them in 3 changes of saltwater over a period of an hour so that they would supposedly purge some of the sand.  The clams I purchased were undoubtedly live, but IMHO,  the 'purging' technique didn't fare any better than not.

Is sand in clams just a fact of life or is there something else that I can do to remove it?