Woodworking: A Step-by-Step Guide to Essential Woodworking Skills, Tips and Projects for Beginners by Raines Jason

Woodworking: A Step-by-Step Guide to Essential Woodworking Skills, Tips and Projects for Beginners by Raines Jason

Author:Raines, Jason [Raines, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2020-09-20T16:00:00+00:00


Properly Sanding Wood

The final technique that we are going to go over is sanding. We sand wood in order to remove marks, reduce the size of a board ever so slightly, make it easier to apply finish and remove unwanted stains. Really, there are any number of reasons that you might want to sand your wood. There are a handful of factors to consider before you start sanding a project. The first of these that we’ll discuss is the grit count of the sandpaper you are using. Next we’ll briefly discuss fine-sanding. From there we’ll look at the three common ways of sanding and finally we’ll discuss the removal of sanding dust from the project as it can get in the way of a proper sanding and when we know it is time to stop sanding.

Sandpaper comes in different grit counts. You find these listed as numbers such as #30, #60, #80, #150, #220. These are a few examples, as you can get incredibly fine sandpapers with massive grit counts. You can also find pretty much everything inbetween, too. You can find a lot of information out there about what grit count is perfect for different types of projects or woods. Honestly, a lot of this information is personal preference rather than any real rule but it does lead to a lot of confusion around which grit count is the best.

We’re going to completely toss out the idea of a “best” grit count. Instead we are going to focus on being practical. Since sanding is most often done to remove issues from the board, we want to make sure that the sandpaper we select does so. Therefore, we should start with a sandpaper with a lower number. A lower number has less grit and this means that it is going to be rougher. It will remove more issues but it will also scratch up the surface of the board. This creates quite an ugly look but it will certainly remove any problems such as machine burns or stains.

We don’t stop there. Say we begin sanding with a #30 grit sandpaper. We would then move up to a #60 or #80 grit sandpaper. From there we can then jump up to a #150 or a #180 grit paper. With each step up, you’ll find that there are less scratches left on the surface of the board and therefore the board begins to look more and more like its natural form. Except that the problem we had with the board was easily removed. If we had started on a larger grit number then we’d find it more difficult to remove the problem because we are sanding away much finer amounts of wood. If you are in doubt as to which sandpapers to use then start with the lowest grit you can find and purchase a piece of sandpaper with every grit number up until about #180.

You can get sandpaper that goes past #180. There are sandpapers as high as #600 or more! Rarely will you find that you need to use these.



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