Rubbing oil with a ROS

[gdayj]

I've gathered a little bit of info on the idea of rubbing oil into timber with a fine grade sandpaper and a random orbital sander.

Does anyone here have real experience with this?

Specifically, I'm assuming It'd be best to use papers without extraction holes to prevent oil being sucked through the sander?

Any tips greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Justin.

[gdayj]

anyone?

[rsser]

No holes would sound sensible, but the abrasive, oil and wood dust make for a fairly heavy slurry so I'd guess little if any would be sucked up.

I speak from the experience of using Organoil Hard Burnishing Oil on turnings and making the slurry on a lathe; so really I'm making a guess. I've seen ROS produced slurries on flat surfaces at wood shows but not watched to see what discs were used.

[Waldo]

I've applied a final finish of Maloof's oil mix using 1500 grit on my ROS before no worries. I didn't worry about the fact I might have sucked a bit of stuff down the guts of the ROS or to the vac it was hooked up to.

And it hasn't worried the ROS about a year later.

[LGS]

G'day Justin,

I routinely friction seal oil into timber using a Festool RO150/3 or Rotex 150 Random Orbital Sander. I sand the timber to 400grit, then add oil then sand from 400g to 4000g. (You get a very nice mirror finish.)

Holes make no difference. When you are working with the oil, it does not take long to form a slurry, as Rsser described for turning, so just don't use vacuum. Its not needed anyway.

The pads for 1200,1500,2000 and 4000 have no holes in them anyway.

Even if you do get some crust forming in the holes, its no big drama to remove the base and soak it in turps for a while.

Regards,

Rob

[Manuka Jock]

I've gathered a little bit of info on the idea of rubbing oil into timber with a fine grade sandpaper and a random orbital sander.

Does anyone here have real experience with this?

Specifically, I'm assuming It'd be best to use papers without extraction holes to prevent oil being sucked through the sander?

Any tips greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Justin.

Keep us posted with pics Justin .
The wet sanding that I have done , by hand , has been on the lathe , so flat work results will be interesting to see .

[Enfield Guy]

I use a velcro backed pad on my Metabo ROS. Got the pad from a car refinish supplier. About 6 or 7 bucks from memory. It has the holes in it but I offset it and use the disks with no holes. I have finished a few pieces like this now and I don't have any stray finish on my ROS pad.

Cheers

[Manuka Jock]

The Sandpaper Man who lives at the top of this thread , has these Interface Pad - 300 mm Square | The Sandpaper Man for putting on over the holely pad of orbital sanders etc.

[gdayj]

Keep us posted with pics, flat work results will be interesting to see .

Will do.

Thanks for the tip guys, greatly appreciated.

J