Sandpaper

James M Sandbrook

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When you are new to using something as simple as sandpaper you (or I) can get it all mixed up.

Thankfully these days we have the Internet and we have many ways of finding out about this simple yet very important subject.
I just bought 100 pieces of 5''/150 mm sandpaper discs and I am sanding a wall in my hall in preparation for painting.
One thing we home handy folk should realise that since we don't paint, sand, prepare, etc, for a living it is easy to forget the finer details of the tools and equipment we use, so revisiting the fine specifications helps us out a lot and reminds us of the best ways to use our gear.

Please never be ashamed of relearning or going over old information. It is better to do that than to make a big, embarrassing expensive mistakes. Look at the images below to help you out and click on them to go to the web pages they came from for additional information.

Sometimes it is a bit of trial and error choosing the right grit sandpaper to use on a particular project.
Please note that when sanding by hand you are less likely to make a mistake that an electric sander can make. An electric sandpaper can take off the surface fast and leave us wishing that we had stopped using the electric sander earlier and finished the job my hand. Practicing on unimportant scrap pieces of wood helps.

There is another type of sandpaper called wet and dry sandpaper, and you can use that wet, as in you can dip it in water to wash the metal dust off it when you are sanding metal/paint.