Oil finishes and orbital sanders

[Winslow]

Neil,
in your Polishers handbook you recommend the use of an orbital sander for oil finishes (using wet and dry) on a large surface and going down to 1500 grit or thereabouts. I am in that boat, a table top where I am considering Danish Oil to get a hard surface.
Trouble is none of the orbital sander I have looked at have wet and dry discs available for their sanders and none go past 400 grit. I do not think one can cut wet and dry from the sheet since the discs have a velcro backing so their would be no means of attaching the 'shop made' discs to the sanding face.
Can you advise please before I stuff it up?
Winnie

[Carry Pine]

I think I remeber seeing zillions of sheets and pads of different grades ar Carba tec in Auburn. Maybe another member can be more helpful.Or give them a call.
Cheers

[ubeaut]

Been away just got back. Festool have velour backed disks up to 1200 available from Carba-Tec or any other Festool distributor. Try for an automotive trade supplier in yellow pages they usually have it up to 2000 and sometimes above but in sheets rather than disks. DON"T look for it at Bunnies , Mitre 10 or any of the hardware type places as they will mostly look at you stupidly and say there is no such thing.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers - Neil

PS Often finding what you need require you to think outside of the circle and more often than not will mean you may have to compromise by cutting your own or maybe using contact adhesive to glue ordinary paper onto a worn out velour backed piece to make your own.

There are easy ways and funny ways to get what you want. Some are even fun.

[scooter]

I think the lateral thinking direction in Neil's PS is the go, rather than paying the premium for the velcro disks, make up another backing pad that you can attach sticky back disks to. They can be bought much more cheaply than the velcro jobbies.

Another way is to get a tin of the PSA adhesive (Pressure Sensitive Adhesive - the type that is used on the sticky back disks), a call to Bostik customer service will get the info, and then as Neil said use ordinary paper to make up your disks.


Cheers..............Sean

[TJH]

You can actually get them at some hardware stores, triton makes them for their random orbital angle grinder atachment, though if you can get them elseware you'll probably find them cheaper.

Tim