Ultra-fine Sanding Discs

[erikbojerik]

I don't know about you guys, but I use a random orbital sander a lot! And it always frustrated me that there were no hook & loop (velcro) disks readily available that were finer than ~320 grit. This gets especially frustrating when I get to the finishing stage.

Today I hit on an idea to make my own. You need (all available at Office Depot or Staples):

- CD for each grit

- adhesive-backed velcro

- Scotch double-sided paper tape

Stick the fuzzy velcro on the data side of the CD (the side with the circular ridge in the center), and stick the paper tape to the label side (the side without the ridge). Then cut out your favorite ultra-fine sandpaper and stick it onto the tape. Done & ready for wet sanding. Just be very careful to not dig the edge into the finish; lift it off & set it down very carefully at the finest grits.

Get your sandpaper here. They actually have hook & loop discs to 400 grit.

Here's a photo of my home-builts - 800-1200-2000-2500 grits.

[ansil]

very nice have you ever taken metal dust and or sand and made your own sand paper from glue paper. its quite nice and quite cheap.. depending on what you are sanding they have really fine sand that you can put in a bucket or a tank and spin the item you need sanded down. i do this on some of my boxes.. well until i left the great state of florida.

[soapbarstrat]

If that's the Regis guy on that one CD, I hope you power sand the hell out of his face

[erikbojerik]

If that's the Regis guy on that one CD, I hope you power sand the hell out of his face

Don't YOU want to be a millionaire?

That was one of those CDs we got in a box of our kids' cereal. My wife suggested I use my Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs but I was having none of that!

The CDs work great as a stable flat base for fine-sanding flat areas, but are a bit too stiff for working with curved areas (carved tops and backs of necks) where you want more flexibility for the sandpaper to conform to the surface. For that, I just replace the CD with transparency film or a similar flexible material. The idea is that you want something that you can reuse (peel off old sandpaper and stick new stuff on). The adhesive on that velcro is too strong to stick the sandpaper to directly, you won't be able to get it off cleanly.

[ddgman2001]

I can't remember if we've used 320 velcro or not, but we get 1200 and 1500 from an autobody supply.

[Drak]

Erik, have you not heard of Abralon sanding pads yet??

They go respectively 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 grit, been using them on my hook and loop orbital sander for years.

They're soft and spongey, you can pull them off of your sander and use them by hand, you can use them for dry sanding or wet sanding, whatever you want.

I continually blow them off with compressed air and they just keep going and going and going and going...

These are how I finish my instruments without wetsanding now. No more water-lifts on my finishes. Water lifts piss me off more than anything else, and I hate them intensly, thus the reason to find a way to finish a finish with no more water (or very very little)

And Abralon pads last damn near forever, I'm only on my second set in 5 years now, you will love them if you ever try them.

[westhemann]

http://homesteadfinishing.com/htdocs/Mirkaabrasives2.htm

[erikbojerik]

Ooooooo! Thanks for the link on the Abralon pads! I love them already, and I don't even have any yet.

No more Regis CDs for me...

Drak...I know what you mean about water lifts, but I still find that I get better results wet than dry when it gets down to <600 grit. Maybe I just need more practice.

[Drak]

Well you're right there, the only time I still use water is to flat-level everything, which is usually around 600. I'm even trying to get past that now by increasingly dead-flatting my surface as I get very near my last coats, I'd love to eliminate water completely, and almost have now.

The Abralons never see water, although you can wet sand with them, I don't.

I dead-flat the finish one way or another, move to the Abralons up thru their grit stages, then on to my last two 3M products, a polishing compound then a swirl remover, used on the Stew-Mac orange foam polishing pads, and it's done.

[ddgman2001]

Try mineral spirits or paint thinner instead of water - no lifting. Wear a cartridge mask.

[erikbojerik]

I dead-flat the finish one way or another, move to the Abralons up thru their grit stages, then on to my last two 3M products, a polishing compound then a swirl remover, used on the Stew-Mac orange foam polishing pads, and it's done.

Yep, that's pretty much the way I'm doing it (except wet); with the StewMac pads I clamp my drill down and hold the body with both hands. I'm getting ready to re-buff an old project, I'll try it all-dry once I get the Abralon pads in.

[Drak]

It really helps if you have compressed air handy to blow out the pads of the collected sawdust or finish dust, or else I just slap them thoroughly on a table end, but a compressor works much better for really cleaning them out from one use to the next.

One time I might be using them on a lacquer finish, another time I might be using them to buff a bare wood top up to 4000, so I always like to blow them out thoroughly between uses.

But if you're just using them exclusively for buffing finishes, probably no biggie then.

[erikbojerik]

I've got no compressed air, but I do have some more-powerful-than-average cans of that dust-buster stuff, which I use all the time. Now that I'll have the fine-grit pads, I will also use them for everything.

[Drak]

When you see how much material a blast of compressed air will blow out of them compared to a few slaps on a table edge, you'll know what I mean.,

[jay5]

Drak, what is dead flattening the surface?

[erikbojerik]

It means, at first, to sand the wood so that it is perfectly flat, i.e. if you put a straightedge on it, there are no big gaps of light showing underneath.

Then, when you apply sanding sealer and sand back, same thing. Except you also want the finish to be "flat" (or "matte"), i.e. no shiny spots. So flat (topography) and flat (finish).

Same with the clear coat prior to buffing at the end; by that point it should be already flat (topo) so finish-sand flat (matte) then buff.

[jay5]

Thanks Erik

[erikbojerik]

OK....thanks to Drak & Wes I've obtained & tried out these Abralon sanding pads. Man, I love them, perfect for any contoured surface (on the orbital or by hand) just before buff-out, but I still have a problem.

When fine-sanding on sanding sealer or clear coat, the foam backing of the Abralons is just soft enough and thick enough that they don't level out runs or flow-out or orange peel very well. The surface gets uniformly scufffed, but there are still various "waves" left where the sealer or clear has flowed out. I have 400-grit hook-n-loop disks but that's too aggresive on clear coat. Even if I could get some 600 or 800-grit hook-n-loop I think the fuzzy backing is still too forgiving to perfectly level out the finish.

So I'm finding that I'm coming back to these home-made discs. I've been working on a clear-coat that has some signficant flow-out & orange peel waves, and I find that 1200 grit (wet) stuck to a CD makes everything perfectly level without sanding through. The key is that the CD is stiff and doesn't flex hardly at all...the orbital sander version of the wood block sander.

After that, I'll move on to the Abralons.

[Phil Mailloux]

I had orange peel after I was done with my clear coats. It was all gone after I sanded with abralon pads of 500 grit on my RO sander. They worked like a charm, I did the whole flatening/polishing thing with them from 500 to 4000 grits and my bass is absolutely beautiful. I never once brought water or any other "wet-sanding" agents anywhere near this bass.

I can't thanks Drak enough for all the info he's given over here about abralon pads.

[erikbojerik]

Phil, did you shoot your coats with an air gun?

I'm stuck using rattle-can poly for now, so my clear coats are pretty thin. I'd be frightened using 500 grit on the stuff I'm working on...

[Phil Mailloux]

Ok, makes sense I guess

I'm using a spray rig with nitro

[Drak]

I'm glad y'alls likes 'em.

And I'll return the favor by using Erik's idea when I have a little bump in the finish!

We all make out I guess.

If I could possibly tell you how -much- I hate water when finishing now, hehehe.

Water has ruined more jobs that were <that> far from -completely- done.

Not much actually makes me truly angry, but the water lifting my finish took me <there>. A place I don't like to be.

I wish I had a t-shirt with a 'No Water' sign on it.

What a geeky T that would be.

[erikbojerik]

If I could possibly tell you how -much- I hate water when finishing now, hehehe.

Water has ruined more jobs that were <that> far from -completely- done.

Not much actually makes me truly angry, but the water lifting my finish took me <there>. A place I don't like to be.

Happened to me just yesterday...not even much water really, just a bit of soap foam got under a few frets and lifted the fingerboard finish (argh!). I think it'll be OK once it dries out and with the strings on and all. But I am definitely moving toward dehydrating my finishing routine...

[bigdguitars]

Drak you said no water when using these but it states this:

"To rub out wood finishes, use 5" variable speed random orbit sander with 6" hook & loop (H&L) interface pad (915-373). Spray water onto wood coating and wet sand using super-fine pad (1000 grit) to level the finish. Micro-fine (2000 grit) leaves a satin finish. Mirror-fine (4000 grit) creates a high gloss. (Keep surface damp when using pads.) Finally, polish to a mirror gloss with a polishing compound.

"

I have been hand sandind with water and its a mess but its ok...

How are you using these might try them out....

[Drak]

That's the cool thing about them, they're SO flexable, you can use them lots of ways.

With water, without water, on an orbital sander, by hand, god I love those things!

But I use my Abralons completely dry, all the time.

They're not too good for levelling a finish tho, they'll level a -little-, but for serious levelling, I (sometimes wet-sanding) use 400 or 600 regular sanding discs, then switch back to the 500 Abralon and move on up from there. When I hit that 400-600 phase is the only time I will ever use water anymore, and I don't use water all the time, just sometimes if I feel it's needed. Less and less as time goes by actually.

If you're using an orbital sander with holes in the bottom, those sanders have vacuum systems that suck up the wood dust and blow it out the exhaust port. But if you're wet-sanding w/ Abralons, they'll suck up the water right thru the pad into the sander and you'll be out buying a new sander very shortly. It'll suck up the water into the sander and short it out in short order, so if you're going to wet-sand, you need that adapter that has NO holes in it so you can't suck any water up into the sander.

After I go all the way to 4000, then I finish up using the orange Stew-Mac foam pads chucked on my electric drill (one for each product) of 3M Imperial Microfinishing Compound, then top it off with 3M Perfect-It Foam Polishing Pad Glaze (swirl remover basically)

That's how I do it. That's the DrakBackYard finishing system.

Abralons are so great because you can pull them off the orbital sander and use them by hand for the sides and horns and corners and hard-to-reach areas and stuff.