Getting The Most Out Of Your Sandpaper

[Mind Riot]

Hi all. I was just wondering what some of your tips and tricks are for getting the most use out of your sandpaper? Particularly higher grit stuff.

I've been picking up a variety of sandpaper to use for fret work, and I know the finer grits load up very quickly and lose their effectiveness. Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I'm just wondering what everyone does to clean their paper and get the most use out of it. Cloth? Compressed air?

I noticed some kind of wax rubber block with a handle at my local hardware store that says it's for cleaning abrasives and lubricating. Anybody ever use anything like this?

I also picked up a set of those little foam abrasive finishing pads from Stew Mac when I made my last order, the ones that go from 2400 to 12000 grit. I'd like to get the most out of them, but I'm not sure how to go about cleaning them off to restore the cut.

Again, I apologize if this is something everyone else already knows, but I haven't done much finishing or polishing work in the past where I've used very fine paper like this, and I'm not sure how to deal with how it loads up.

I'm going to be using this stuff for fret polishing and removing file marks after leveling, so using them wet isn't really an option.

Thanks in advance for any information.

[Southpa]

All my fine grits (600 and finer) are used for wetsanding finishes. The paper stays relatively clean in this process so I reuse it quite a lot. A lot depends on what you are sanding. If you are just sanding wood then the paper should last for a very long time. For stripping old paint, varnish etc. I use other means (stripper, heat gun, scraping etc.) to get down to wood. Then I will finish with sandpaper scraps which will be discarded. When sanding frets with MY method, I hardly use any paper. I'll just tear off a little piece, maybe 1" X 2", fold it twice and do all the frets then move on to the next finer grit and do the same.