Travis Johnson
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As just about everyone knows, at work I spend a fair amount of time sanding. Its just the way it is building high end yachts. Anyway, while the job can get tedious, I am always looking for faster ways to get from point A to point B. The point A being raw stock, and point B being a nice gleaming surface that will reflect your image back to you with no flaws.
Naturally I experiment with different methods.
Traditionally I always started with 100 or 180 grit sand paper and worked my way up. I would sand by hand or machine using 100 grit paper until all the defects were gone and all the scratches were out, then jump to the next grit all the way up to 4000 grit.
Well lately I tried something new. I started with 100 grit, but I did not bother to get all the scratches out. I would sand for a minute or two, when the paper got worn out I would jump to the next grit and go from there. Never once did I try to get all the scratches and defects out. Just sanded a bit, then moved on. I would go all the way up to 1200 grit, then drop back down to 100 grit and start over. I did this 4 or 5 times before I had a nice shiny plate that I could continue on past 1200 grit up to 4000 grit.
But here is the kicker. The second way of doing this saved me a lot of time. I mean a couple of hours. I am not sure why. It makes no sense that skip-sanding as I call it would bring the surface down smooth and shiny so fast. You would think getting ALL the defects out before moving on would be better and faster. I tried this several times this week and the speed is always the same. Skip sanding is a lot faster.
Well obviously sanding stainless steel is a lot different than sanding wood, but I am wondering if I stumbled onto something here. Would skip sanding on wood also be faster and yet give the same flawless finish? My other question is why do you think this method is so much faster?
Just kind of curious if I stumbled upon something interesting here.
Naturally I experiment with different methods.
Traditionally I always started with 100 or 180 grit sand paper and worked my way up. I would sand by hand or machine using 100 grit paper until all the defects were gone and all the scratches were out, then jump to the next grit all the way up to 4000 grit.
Well lately I tried something new. I started with 100 grit, but I did not bother to get all the scratches out. I would sand for a minute or two, when the paper got worn out I would jump to the next grit and go from there. Never once did I try to get all the scratches and defects out. Just sanded a bit, then moved on. I would go all the way up to 1200 grit, then drop back down to 100 grit and start over. I did this 4 or 5 times before I had a nice shiny plate that I could continue on past 1200 grit up to 4000 grit.
But here is the kicker. The second way of doing this saved me a lot of time. I mean a couple of hours. I am not sure why. It makes no sense that skip-sanding as I call it would bring the surface down smooth and shiny so fast. You would think getting ALL the defects out before moving on would be better and faster. I tried this several times this week and the speed is always the same. Skip sanding is a lot faster.
Well obviously sanding stainless steel is a lot different than sanding wood, but I am wondering if I stumbled onto something here. Would skip sanding on wood also be faster and yet give the same flawless finish? My other question is why do you think this method is so much faster?
Just kind of curious if I stumbled upon something interesting here.