Woodworking Online

[Darren]

Just out of curiousity ... do people wet sand their lathe projects much?

I never have - I have just gone up to 600-800 grit and called it good.

I understand (I think I do) the purpose of wet sanding (opens grains more
etc), but what is the best technique to do it? Actually put a damp cloth on
the piece and then let it sit for a bit (x amount of time) and then sand it
from there? Put a bit of water etc on the sand paper? Maybe I am way off
base here ...

Thanks
Darren

[AHilton]

I "wet sand" finishes but not bare wood. The main finish type that I wet
sand is when I'm going for a "piano finish" on something. For instance, the
oil drop turnings that I made about a year ago had around 20-30 coats of
black lacquer on them. Between each coat of lacquer, I hand sanded from
600 - 1200 grit with water-soaked wet/dry automotive sandpaper. I tried
several different lubricants (the "wet" in wet sanding of finishes) but
water worked best this time. This gave me a great, deep, wet look that I
wanted. Had I gone longer, I would have developed a highly polished,
mirror-like finish effect instead of a dead black "oil" effect that I got.

Otherwise, I think maybe you're just thinking of raising the grain in order
to sand it off and get a smoother finish? If that's the case, then I do
that all of the time with flat work, not too often in woodturning. However,
I don't use water. I use a faster evaporating liquid like mineral spirits
(pretty quick) on up to toluene (nasty stuff but evaporates really quickly)
so that don't have to wait around to finish things up. Using water: just
use a spritz bottle and spray the wood a little all around. You don't need
to soak the piece. Wait however long to let it surface dry and raise the
grain. Sand very lightly with your final grit sandpaper. Don't wet your
sandpaper.

On the other hand, you may have heard of the process of sanding woodturnings
when wet either by water or wax or mineral oil. I believe in most of those
cases, it's the slurry that's often produced and fills in the pores of the
wood that's giving the smoother feeling to some woodturnings. I don't
like the look of pieces where this has been done as it looks muddy and
fuzzy. No clear definition of the grain, etc.

I don't like to do this with anything but tough pieces that are going to be
finished with mineral oil (plus other stuff maybe) anyway and are
experiencing bad problems with tearout. For the truely terrible pieces with
tearout problems, I use other methods but that's a different discussion.
The mineral oil (or equivalent) will help to stiffen the fibers and fill the
intra-fiber areas so that I can more easily shear them off with a tool. But
then you tend to have other problems such as the muddy appearance mentioned
above.

Hope this helps,

- Andrew



"Darren" <darrenge@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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[billh]

"Darren" <darrenge@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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