Thread: Newbie sanding confusion

Who doesn't enjoy sanding! I love it

Not long ago, I saw an ad for a job at a local studio. It was for a sanding grunt. Sanding all day, every day. Nothing but sanding from morning till evening.

See? There are entire jobs devoted to what we love.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Who doesn't enjoy sanding! I love it

Not long ago, I saw an ad for a job at a local studio. It was for a sanding grunt. Sanding all day, every day. Nothing but sanding from morning till evening.

See? There are entire jobs devoted to what we love.

I made furniture professionally for a short while, and we definitely had a "sanding guy". He'd been doing it for seven years and was as content as he could be. All day, every day for seven years.

Of course, we all thought he had fried his brain in the 60's using too many psychadelics... but I guess whatever you need to do to prepare yourself for seven years of sanding could potentially be worth it.

Hi Mary and welcome to the forums. Sanding is sometimes a contentious issue as you will see from the above to and fro. Sanding on a lathe has some differences to sanding flat panels because the lathe alternately offers up different grain direction and so some responses will be based on turning, which is not relevant to your work.

However, some points are clear to all:
1. use good quality paper
2. use a cork block
3.stepping up the grits gradually will help (80, 100, 120, 150, 180, 240, 320, 400 ...) especially when you are starting.
4. Never move to the next grit if you have not removed the scratches from the grit before. That is, if you start with 80 grit then move to 100 grit, make sure all the scratches from the 80 grit are removed before you move to 120 grit, etc.
5. Finish the inside of a box as much as possible before assembly (I even apply the final finish) because it is much harder to do afterwards.

One thing that has not been made clear to you is that not all random orbital sanders are the same. It is not only the brand quality of the machine but also the radius of the random movement. Some ROS are very aggressive as they are really designed to use under paint or for removing paint. Yours may be in that category, I don't know. I had a Ryobi ROS when I was a wood butcher, it was great with coarse grits to remove paint as part of house renos. But once I set my sights on doing fine woodwork it was quickly discarded.

There are good quality ROS (Bosch blue (professional grade) Festool or the new Mirko sanders as well as others). They will all produce good results.

I started out in restoring Australian Antique furniture. Back in the 1800's sandpaper was not really a thing. Timber was mostly finished with planes and card scrapers.

I recommend that you get yourself a card scraper and a burnisher (to put the 'hook' edge on it) and do some practice. If you find the edges digging in then just use a file to round the sharp corners away - problem solved. Make sure the edge of the scraper is perfectly flat before you use the burnisher to apply the hook. There is a fair bit of info on the web about using scrapers.

The most helpful thing to me when I started trying to achieve fine woodwork was to do some courses with professionals. I really recommend that you look for some professional woodwork classes near you in Melbourne. Learning on your own is very hard work and many people either give up or settle for poor quality because they don't know any better.

Until I took classes I had wasted a lot of money on substandard equipment that I had to sell at a loss. Depending on what kind of woodwork you want to do you may not need to buy much in the way of machinery as hand tools, in experienced hands, can achieve a great deal. I have hand tools, and use them, but also have some fairly heavy duty machinery but not everyone needs to do that. However, cheap machinery is just a pain from my experience.

I have also found some woodwork magazines to be worthwhile, though they eke out the info to keep you hooked.

Good luck

David

Thanks for the summary David. That was useful .

You may be right about my sander.
The Ros has been useful for getting marks out of my bad resawing pieces and glue ups of those into lids or bases. It also made it simpler to hand sand after using the Ros to 120. I don't have dust collection and have only used one type of sandpaper which may make a difference. I thought it was my inexperience but I had an old 1/4 sheet sander that didn't last long and I seemed to get better results with that than I do with the Ros.

I inherited tools from my uncle when he died, which is how I got started because I wanted to learn to use them. I have also been cleaning my Dad's old tools as he has dementia. That's why the combination sander was scratched - because I didn't know what I was doing. It does mean that I don't know how much of the issues are the tools.

I think you're right about the classes. The internet has been fantastic but... I can't really afford to go to classes but I have just found a woodworking club near me so I will give it a go.

It may have been frustrating but I don't think I would have learnt as much if I had started with nicely milled wood and cut it on a saw that produced nice square cuts. But now I know what to do basically, I need to get good at it.
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I will give the card scraper another go. I spent a bit of time investigating the concept but was just getting it happening when I moved and haven't tried again. It makes sense to me and I absolutely love book matching which I believe it is suited for.

Cork? I have read that you should have a backing for the sandpaper but opinion seems to vary. Maybe that's why I was scratching. It seems to work best if I slide the paper over gently and make sure to keep it flat and the surface of the paper touching consistently. A bit of wood with a couple of layers of paper works ok but I have to be gentle.

I have actually come to enjoy the hand sanding because you get the feel of the wood and see it happening. Even though I find sanding frustrating it is also magic to be able to bring the potential beauty of the wood out. Sometimes I don't want to cut a piece of wood because it is so beautiful and to be able to make something that does justice to it is awesome. I guess I'm a bit weird but I want to be able to show the beauty of it.

I really should have joined the forum earlier

Originally Posted by Mnb

I don't have dust collection

This creates a few problems Mary. The obvious one is breathing in the dust, but it also causes you to go through sanding discs faster because of heat build up which has two facets to it. Firstly it stops dust from clagging up the disc , which causes heat build up. Secondly, it causes air to rush over the job/disc/sander which keeps everything cooler. This becomes particularly important if you are sanding back paint or lacquers, as well as some particular timbers that are are resinous.

Hand sanding probably doesn't create too much invisible dust, but machine sanding most certainly does. Invisible dust is actually the dust that gets us the most, for two reasons. It is invisible because it is so fine, and therefore penetrates lung tissue more easily and deeply. Second, because it is invisible, we may be tempted to take off the dust mask because the air appears to be clear and we think there is no danger, when exactly the opposite is the case. Be aware that there really is no cheap solution to dust control - cheap vacs just tend to grind up the dust and spew it back out into the room as even finer dust - and therefore even more dangerous.

If you search for "invisible dust" on the forum you will get hundreds of hits, if you wish to research it further.

As others have said, make sure you don't skip grits, and get the previous scratch pattern out. This actually doesn't cost more in sandpaper - just a bigger spread of more grits in smaller quantities.

I will research invisible dust. I am somewhat prone to taking the mask off and have been wondering about the damage.

I want to say thank you to everyone that has replied. All the posts have been useful and I haven't responded to many that I was intending to.

I feel much clearer now though the ability to actually do the things I know to do will take time.

Looking back, I used to use old sanding pads and when hand sanding but seemed to have unlearnt that at some stage. Same with sanding before making or assembly- I didn't do it because my mitres kept failing then I somehow forgot. I had become completely confused and you have all helped.

Thanks everyone.

Cork blocks are the standard backing to use for hand sanding. There are lots of different brands (not just the one pictured below) and as far as I know they are all pretty much the same. Only $3- 4 each available lots of places including from the big green shed.

Cork block.jpg

DUST

One of the simplest ways to avoid nasty dust is to have your dust extractor or vacuum cleaner outside the room that you are working in. Unfortunately, the ultrafine dust is only moved by a large flow of air, so the small vacuums are not very good - though better than nothing as long as you use a very good mask as well and have the vac outside. The paper masks are ineffective, a good silicone mask with the correct cartridges is more effective - the dust experts on the forums don't believe in any of them but I think something is better than nothing. the dust extraction section of these forums is really educational.

Might be worth getting a copy of "A Polishers Handbook" this will not only help you with sanding but also finishing and is a great read as well as the best finishing information for all from beginners to advanced woodworkers.



I had one of the original from years ago and it has served me well.



Highly recommended.



Darky

I genuinely enjoy finishing, and all that entails.... including sanding. Stuff would have to be bad before I'd be using 120 or less. 80 is really grinding...

Be sure to hold your ROS flat, not on an angle, and don't apply too much downward pressure. Let the paper do the work. For me it is 240, 320, 400. But but 240 and first coat of sealer/finish is a good start.

Sent from my MI 5s using Tapatalk

xanthorroeas - thanks, I have seen those and will get a couple. I was using a sort of foam thing that had sandpaper on it but I was wrapping paper around it. When I realised I was creating scratches while getting rid of others I started using just my hand so I could feel what was going on. I wasnt thinking properly with being sick and just kept going like that until this thread.

I will have to consider the dust situation. I had a couple of silicon masks and will be more conscious about wearing one now after looking at the info that- sorry I forgot- mentioned.

q9 - haven't done much finishing but I have enjoyed what I have. The first box I was reasonably happy with the sanding of, which was also only the second time I successfully cut the lid off a box, I used blackberry juice for the lid panel. It was too red on its own but two blackberries mixed with a thinned down walnut stain was awesome. I ripped a piece of the same wood as the box into thin pieces and turned them on their side to make a pattern.

Sorry. Yeah I have been starting too coarse. Think I was used to sanding to flatten and after cutting badly -so I didn't know that it's a different story at the end.



EVERY one - I got a "that looks good" from my dad on the sanding of the box I have just done. He's in the early stages of dementia but even though he's not able to show me or explain he still knows a lot. I had only got frowns or "better" before now though he never seems discouraging somehow. Thanks again guys.