Sandpaper

[Kittyhawk]

I had a very unsettling experience yesterday.
Normally I bulk buy my sandpaper so not very often, but needed to stock up again. The brand I like was out of stock so the young shop girl came over to help. 'What are you sanding?' she asked.
'Wood...why?
'This paper is for wood and wood products, this paper is for paint, this is for plaster, this for metal....'
Obviously I know about dry paper and the black wet and dry, but am I the only person in the world that didn't know that, excluding metal, what sandpaper you use depends on the material to be sanded?

 

[Bingy man]

There are more types of sandpaper nowadays that cover a variety of different materials but I’ve always used emery cloth on metal. Most of my work is with wood but that still leaves a multitude of different brands, types and of course different grades. Paint and varnish etc tend to clog up quickly when regular sandpaper is used hence the influx of all these new types -aluminium oxide for example. Personally though I wouldn’t buy a specific paper for say plaster unless I had a lot of that type of sanding to do .

 

[robgul]

. . . and Abranet which I was introduced to at Peter Sefton's French Polishing course - I really like it, and it lasts for ages if you just shake out the dust and fit back on the sanding pad.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Abranet is available in 5m rolls from Toolstation if you need only the slightly coarser grades. £15.45.

 

[AES]

+1 for Abranet (and here anyway, there are several copies on the market, like stuff from Wolfcraft, which also works well). As above, just take it off the sanding block, pad, whatever, bang it on the corner of the waste bin, and most of the stuff drops out, leaving it good to go).

I've also seen, but not tried, Festool have something similar called Granite" I think.

 

[Ollie78]

Just got a couple of boxes of the 3M xtract cubitron disks 150mm. I ran out of abranet and thought I would try it out.
I would say it's better than abranet. For one it is far less likely to tear, I find abranet can rip from the sides the 3M is a different type of cloth.Secondly it appears to last very well. It was slightly cheaper than the abranet as well.
Oh really sticky velcro as well.
I recommend it.

Ollie

 

[Richard_C]

I've just started using abranet, really like it. Very flexible so may suit the sort of work the OP does.

(Message for Kittyhawk - Vampire flying over the garden recently. Roosts at IWM Duxford)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There was a video a while back here (posted by D.W?) which showed very, very well organised tests of about twenty abrasives. Abranet did well, but Cubitron was the out and out winner. Bosch, Makita and DeWalt branded stuff came last.

 

[AES]

Thanks for that Ollie & Phil. Never heard of that product before. What's more (good for me) I can get it from Amazon.de, so I guess it's on all their "dot somewheres" too.

 

[robgul]

+1 for Abranet (and here anyway, there are several copies on the market, like stuff from Wolfcraft, which also works well). As above, just take it off the sanding block, pad, whatever, bang it on the corner of the waste bin, and most of the stuff drops out, leaving it good to go).

I've also seen, but not tried, Festool have something similar called Granite" I think.

I also bought the Abranet kit that has a pad with a vac hose - I just connect it to my Henry and the dust disappears! The pad also has a soft interlay insert that gives you greater flex on the abrasive surface for mouldings etc.

 

[AES]

I also bought the Abranet kit that has a pad with a vac hose - I just connect it to my Henry and the dust disappears! The pad also has a soft interlay insert that gives you greater flex on the abrasive surface for mouldings etc.

Yeah, I bought the same (I think). It's yellow plastic, non-electric, soft-ish pad with a house connection. Got it from Axi. Agreed, it's excellent. But for the OP, bearing in mind the relatively small sizes of the bits he sands, that pad MAY be too big for much of his work (maybe OK on the wings of his bigger aeroplanes).

 

[Kittyhawk]

(Message for Kittyhawk - Vampire flying over the garden recently. Roosts at IWM Duxford)

Oh how I remember the Vampires.
The primary school I attended was close to the RNZAF base at a place called Hobsonville, and they flew Vampires. I was forever in trouble for looking skyward out the window when they flew overhead and the teacher finally reassigned me to a desk in the middle of the room, as far away from the widows as she could.

From what I read, I should ideally be using an aluminium oxide paper for general sanding of wood and a silicon carbide paper for fine finishing on wood. The only paper I see in our store is Flex-O-Vit brand which comes in all grits and a variety of colours but entirely no indication of what the grit material is. I presume the colours mean something in this regard. I phoned the wholesaler for clarification but he didn't know either but he promised to find out and get back to me but he didn't.

 

[stuart little]

There was a video a while back here (posted by D.W?) which showed very, very well organised tests of about twenty abrasives. Abranet did well, but Cubitron was the out and out winner. Bosch, Makita and DeWalt branded stuff came last.

I've never been impressed with power tool maker's own brands. I bought some glass paper fo use in my model ship building, but found that the grit came off the backing faster than it sande wood, it wasn't that cheap either.

 

[Fergie 307]

+1 for Abranet (and here anyway, there are several copies on the market, like stuff from Wolfcraft, which also works well). As above, just take it off the sanding block, pad, whatever, bang it on the corner of the waste bin, and most of the stuff drops out, leaving it good to go).

I've also seen, but not tried, Festool have something similar called Granite" I think.

I have the abranet backing pad with a vacuum connector, pleasure to use and highly recommended.

 

[--Tom--]

This is a useful guide. The type of abrasive grain influences its use- mostly for wood you want alox

A lot of wet and dry is SiC, but I find the newer zirconia papers cut steel quicker and for longer with hand sanding, and ceramic belts are great for powered grinding.

https://www.klingspor.co.uk/lowdown-on-grinding/grain-types

 

[D_W]

I had a very unsettling experience yesterday.
Normally I bulk buy my sandpaper so not very often, but needed to stock up again. The brand I like was out of stock so the young shop girl came over to help. 'What are you sanding?' she asked.
'Wood...why?
'This paper is for wood and wood products, this paper is for paint, this is for plaster, this for metal....'
Obviously I know about dry paper and the black wet and dry, but am I the only person in the world that didn't know that, excluding metal, what sandpaper you use depends on the material to be sanded?

currently redoing a floor with shellac - if someone could make a paper that didn't clog with shellac despite heat, they'd have a gold mine. I'm scraping the shellac off, but will progress to floor sanding after that to true the surface and there's definitely a myriad of papers even for floor sanding.

stearated stuff for anything that builds up, which is crap for open hand manual use, but the grains are well embedded in the layer and don't just fly off. I could see the guy who I bought the sander from was using inexpensive fine paper as his last step - like thin hook and loop meant for finish sander, and the floor sander had run the grit right off of the centers. The sander is a glorified four man high stroke ROS (four spindles with simple 6" H&L discs), but it is heavy, fast and makes a lot of heat.

I'm sure the coatings on the various papers and the composition of the alumina are chosen to try to get a user to notice that a disc or belt lasts twice as long before needing to be changed and without needing other attention that becomes labor.

You should see the variety of belts for grinding metals. If you ever find the very expensive ceramic paper, it's totally worthless for wood, but on a high speed belt grinder, you could literally lean against a file or long drill bits and grind it's length away in a couple of minutes. it's worthless for wood because the grains are piles of micron sized particles that act like a coarse grain together, but shed themselves easily which is a handy thing for hardened steel - less heat on both the belt and the tool.

bottom line, each of the purpose specific types is intended to minimize a combination of cost and labor for something specific and the fancy stuff is often not very useful for bare wood where a paper with tough open abrasive is nice.

 

[Kittyhawk]

This is a useful guide. The type of abrasive grain influences its use- mostly for wood you want alox

A lot of wet and dry is SiC, but I find the newer zirconia papers cut steel quicker and for longer with hand sanding, and ceramic belts are great for powered grinding.
View attachment 141474

https://www.klingspor.co.uk/lowdown-on-grinding/grain-types

Thanks for posting. A useful bit of info.

 

[AES]

This is a useful guide. The type of abrasive grain influences its use- mostly for wood you want alox

A lot of wet and dry is SiC, but I find the newer zirconia papers cut steel quicker and for longer with hand sanding, and ceramic belts are great for powered grinding.
View attachment 141474

https://www.klingspor.co.uk/lowdown-on-grinding/grain-types

Now that IS a useful bit of info, thanks a lot.

 

[woodieallen]

Now that IS a useful bit of info, thanks a lot.

Yebbut they forgot to add the abrasive that I reckon Screwfix use on their Titan sandpaper....rock salt. Well, it might as well be, the amount of use you get out of the rubbish before you need a new one.