Harder is better, right?

[rsser]

Talking about power sanding pads here.

If that's not what you had in mind then try Googling :p

To get serious, I've been doing a bunch of Deodar bowls and they have fairly widely spaced growth rings.

With the power sanding pads available locally I was getting rippling; between the harder and softer growth rings.

So I sourced some 'firm' pads from the US to see if foam conformability would make any difference.

Short answer is maybe. This first test didn't have the extremes of ring distance that I've had in the past but the 2" pad seemed to work better.

Drawbacks are:

1. The 2" pad advertised is actually 1/16" of an inch narrower than that and that limits how well you can get into bowl foot corners, either outside with a spigot or inside with a recess.

2. All up, the 2" pad and shank is 1cm shorter than the locally available variety. That's a prob as I use a right angle drill for power sanding. On this test the bowl was around 25cm wide by 10cm deep, so pretty open.

In the pic, from left to right: local 2" pad, then US 2" firm and 3" firm.

The diam of the 3" firm is spot on.

[artme]

Interesting Ern, as are all your assessments.

I have friend who always gets a dead flat bottom on the inside of all his platters and plates. He simply uses a flat piece of timber with abrasive paper attached.

I wonder if the same approach could be used for bowls with a sanding block shaped to a coplementary curve?

[rsser]

Thanks Arthur.

Yeah, with flat platters you can just use a cork block and abrasive, or at least a short straight edge to reveal where you need to scrape some more.

With a curve, lots of practice with the right tool will give a good line that just needs a sanding start at #120, for me at least, but even #180 will produce ripples on Deodar and the like (added: using the traditional pads).

Well, #120 is really a shaping tool, not a finishing one, so the 'firm' foam is just a different kind of handle.

[brendan stemp]

Enjoy the rippling, I reckon!!

Interesting topic, Ern. I would've thought your initial assessment was right; harder is better.

Is the brand name of the of the US pads Viagra?

[rsser]

Yeah, sorry, in the last post I should have qualified the 2nd sentence with 'using the trad sanding pads'. Correction made.

I don't mind a bit of rippling; but the first Deodar bowls were kinds of mortars with pestles and I figured wide ripples might compromise the function a bit.

Viagra ... LOL.

[hughie]

Ern,

Had a similar problem a few years ago with a laminated Merbau bowl. Basically I ended up with a curved very hard pad. The radius of the pad being slightly less than the bowl bottom and had to do some precision scraping to get it back with out ridges before sanding. The whole thing be came a test of patience and perseverance. I have another laminated up and its been sitting on the shelf waiting for me...:C

[rsser]

Crumbs .... nice work hughie.

[rsser]

So here's the washup.

First test was on the bowl outside.

I finished the inside with the hard pad and around the bottom the early growth was up to 50mm wide.

The ripples are as bad as with a trad pad.

Pressing the thumb into the black foam on both, I'd say the density was roughly the same. So the hard pad is less conformable only because there's less of it, but there's still enough to yield rippling.

Oh, and concentrating on getting clearance with the right angle drill meant I failed to see how close to air I was getting on the very bottom and yep, I sanded right through :-

[hughie]

I found that the pad had to be virtually solid so it did not deform to the softer parts of the timber :~ As it was laminated the waves or undulations were not consistent and so looked crappy, unlike perhaps Oregon where you might be able to make use of the regularity of the growth rings.
I am not in much of a hurry to do the next one. :U

[rsser]

Yeah, it's logical.

Thanks.

Dammit ;-}