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Kelly
624 posts
and
15 followers
in over 10 years
in over 10 years
4' x 6' Sandpaper Eraser/Cleaner
I was working on a door and some swirl marks came through on the stain. That meant sanding back through the stain. Of course, that meant I was going to load down sheets and disks of paper just holding the sander within a few feet of the door. What a pain in the neck, and the pocket book.
For some reason, while I was bending over to get something, it occurred to me to run the sander against the horse mat covering the floor. It sure wasn’t going to hurt anything. After running it a few seconds, quite a bit of oily sawdust appeared on the floor. When I looked at the paper, ALL the stain that had loaded the sandpaper was gone.
Cleaning the paper by running it against the [four by six foot] horse mat every few minutes, when it started loosing its effectiveness, allowed me to do as much with one sheet as I would have done with ten.
7 Replies
good idea .
Wheaties
When I made myself a small hand sanding block, I discovered that the paper would load up with dust and become useless within a couple of minutes. I glued a thin sheet of some kind of foam rubber I found onto the bottom, which cushioned the paper just a little. After that it worked fine.
Your story reminded me of this. I can’t remember what prompted me to put the cushioning on, but it worked like a charm.
Losing fingers since 1969
I always keep a cleaning stick around and use it quite often. It cuts down on the sandpaper budget quite a bit.
What is a “horse mat”?
Good Idea Kelly. A little suggestion…to save you from having to do this again look into “trace coat” a method Charles Neil uses all the time to find defects in the wood before final finishing.
woodworking classes, custom furniture maker
Thanks, Jim. Being an old dog and learning new tricks are not mutually exclusive after all.
Interestingly, I abandoned my Festool and 220 and went back to my old reliable quarter sheet sander and the first of the second set of doors did not have the same problem.
Said another way, techniques and equipment need more investigation.
