Silicon Carbide Abrasive Paper

[niall Y]

I am in receipt of an order I placed a few days ago for some Silicon Carbide paper. I notice that what has been sent is Kingspor which I have been always led to believe is Aluminium Oxide.

Not a major problem, but I always prefer Silicon Carbide wet-and-dry for working metal and the Aluminium oxide I tend to use more for finishes.

Mind you Aluminium Oxide, seems to be getting in on the act elsewhere. as most of the Emery cloth products are now also made of this. Whatever happened to emery cloth actually being made of emery?

 

[Sideways]

I wouldn't be surprised to find kingspor make SiC as well as Aluminium Oxide. Worth checking.
If you have been sent the wrong stuff, just ask the seller to send what you ordered.
Their mistake, they have to fix it, including return postage cost if they want the original back.

What are the colours ?
I don't think i've ever seen silicon carbide that wasn't black.
Alox is usually lighter.
Silicon Carbide I think of as fine, sharp and blunts quickly.
Alox more durable but not as sharp.
Different abrasives for different tasks.

 

[niall Y]

Hi, @Sideways, thanks for the reply. I can be a bit of a minefield finding out what any particular wet-and -dry paper is made from. I have some code numbers on the back of the ordered sheets that I can check through, though nothing as helpful as the type of grit used.
Klingspor's UK site has their wet and dry listed as SiC ( Silicon Carbide ), though many of the suppliers on Ebay, ( where I purchased mine from ) have it listed as Aluminium Oxide. I suppose it all boils down to the codes on the back, which I will check out tomorrow.

 

[Fergie 307]

Wet and dry silicon carbide is great, if you can use it wet, otherwise it clogs very quickly. And as sideways says it blunts quickly, so you need to change it regularly.

 

[Trevor Molyneux]

I wouldn't be surprised to find kingspor make SiC as well as Aluminium Oxide. Worth checking.
If you have been sent the wrong stuff, just ask the seller to send what you ordered.
Their mistake, they have to fix it, including return postage cost if they want the original back.

What are the colours ?
I don't think i've ever seen silicon carbide that wasn't black.
Alox is usually lighter.
Silicon Carbide I think of as fine, sharp and blunts quickly.
Alox more durable but not as sharp.
Different abrasives for different tasks.

Silicon carbide is harder than aluminium oxide. It has a Mohr hardness of 9.5 versus 9.0.

 

[Fergie 307]

I think the perception that Aluminium Oxide is harder comes from the fact that it is generally used in fairly coarse grades, so does last longer than the usually much finer grades in wet and dry paper for example.

 

[niall Y]

I've just checked the codes of some of the paper I ordered and the Klingspor is definitely showing as Silicon Carbide. The finer grit stuff is Amtech. This has no indication of what the grit is made from other than the grit size printed on the back, but no codes or other writing whatsoever. So the 'jury is out' on whether this too is SiC.