Sanding prior to staining

[Chesand]

You will need to get the finer grits from one of the sandpaper specialists such as "The Sandpaper Man" or "Pilatus" who are sponsors of this forum. Do a search on here for sandpaper suppliers and I am sure a couple of other names will come up.
There will probably be sandpaper on sale at the Wood Show in Canberra this weekend.
The "emery papers" can be used on timber if necessary.

[LGS]

Chesand is right. Call the Sandpaper Man and ask his advice. Tell him what you want to achieve and he will direct you to the right products.

Regards,

Rob

[GarciaJ]

Sorry, I mis-read the previous posts... the highest grit number mentioned is 2000 which IS on the charts... only just...

Thank you for all the posts everyone...

Jorge

[GarciaJ]

Well, it took me 2 years to get that kind of finish reproducibly and I can assure you that anything under 2000g just doesn't give the finish and durability. Like Chesand, I think "good enough is low aim"

Regards,

Rob

Hi Rob - As I said, your pieces look amazing, but what I meant is that it's not possible from just looking at the photographs that you posted to see what effect sanding with finer grit sandpapers might have had... I get that you think it's very important to make the effort and that sanding all the way down to 2000 grit makes a big difference.

As for my pine shelves... I started with fine quality DAR pine (already fairly smooth) thinking that I would sand with progressively finer sandpapers. I sanded the DAR with P240 and that made a BIG difference - the pine was noticeably smoother. I then sanded with P360 and the wood felt noticeably rougher!!! - I don't understand why - I asked a couple of people to feel the wood to confirm. So I've decided to stop at P240... Sanding is my least favorite part of any job, and I'm not going to spend time making the timber seem rougher. May be pine reacts differently to sanding compared to the hard Australian timbers from which your pieces seem to be made???

I will keep experimenting, in the meantime, thank you for your reply!

[LGS]

Hi again,
I'm sorry that the 320 came up rougher than the 240 and I am surprised. But it's good that you can see the benefit even just going up from 180 to 240 grit. You will definitely notice a difference in the final finish as well. The stain should go on nice and even and resanding between coats at 240 will definitely give you a result that you want.

Try using 400 rather than 320 at some time in the future and see what that does for your result. I think you'll see the benefit to taking the time to finish the work piece with a little extra TL.

Regards,

Rob

[Xanthorrhoeas]

So I started out with P240, and then changed to P360. The P360 defintely feels rougher on pine... so I figure that one of the previous commenters is correct. How fine to go must depend on the timber, even when using oils.

Also I looked this up on Wikipedia, and some of the grit sizes being quoted here are just off the charts. The finest I could get at the local hardware was P240 on normal sandpaper. The finer grades can only be found on emery paper, and described as being for metal finishing. Yet some of you are describing 4000 grit and even higher... surely we are talking about different roughness scales.

The wikipedia chart stops at P2500... which is american grit 1000. The average particle size is only a few microns. At these grit numbers. Yet some of the responses here talk about serval thousand grit.

Many of the people that I know do not sand below 320 grit, and are happy with that. Fine, if you are happy with that, but it is not a fine quality IMO. However, what you need to consider is that a finish from a sharp hand plane or scraper is more akin to a 10,000 grit because it is sooooo fine.

If you need/want to sand then a really fine finish requires a really fine grit. Before I French polish I sand to 1000 or 1200 grit wet and dry, even on a soft timber like Australian cedar (Toona ciliata) and it makes a real difference in the finish. Harder timbers like Blackwood can cope with 320 to 400 grit, but do not deliver a fine finish, IMHO.

Hard work and fine sanding produce better finishes. I leaned to polish from an Austrian cabinet maker. He was taught to polish timber for two days (20 hours) with metho and pumice powder before any shellac was added. THAT is fine quality polish. What we do is pretty rough by comparison.

However, as i have said elsewhere, if you are matching an Australian antique finish then much lower polish levels are appropriate, so it is horses for courses.