The question of hand planes vs. sandpaper has been covered on the forums many times before. In the end my opinion is it comes down to a matter of choice. FWW’s article regarding hand planes and sandpaper under finish was hotly debated, though I tend to agree with it: Under a finish it would be hard to tell what was done to the wood (as long as it was done well).<!—-><!—-> <!—->
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I, like many other woodworkers, dislike sanding. I try to avoid it if I can; as such I tend to use my hand planes and a scrapers to clean up the wood. Some items I stop there, and others I take a little farther with sandpaper 180 or 220 grit sandpaper. I recently read that one woodworker goes from scraper to 400 grit sandpaper. Which has led me to a couple of questions.<!—-> <!—->
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1) Has there been any quantitative tests regarding the wood surface after sanding and planning? This would give us a rough comparison of the surface after each, and perhaps bring us closer to planning is similar to x grit. As a note I do think that this point exists; sand paper, in my understanding, cuts and burnishes the wood. The higher you get in grits the more burnishing occurs. Perhaps the guy with the digital microscope should point it towards the wood surface rather than plane blades!<!—-><!—->
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The reason I ask is perhaps that 180 is a step backwards (more cutting than burnishing), in which case maybe we can jump up to 280 or more. I think it must be in the 180 – 220 range since I never really can tell the difference. (At lower grits it’s seems obvious, and at higher grits I assume that there could be some finishing isues.)<!—-> <!—->
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2) What are you guys doing? I can not be alone in this, at what point (if at all) do you switch to sandpaper? If you don’t<!—-><!—->
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Please don’t turn this into a sandpaper vs plane debate. It’s been done hundreds of times, and there will never be a concensus. It’s the end product that counts, not how sharp your planes are or what brand of paper youuse… etc…<!—-><!—->
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Buster<!—-> <!—->
Replies
hang onto yer hat Buster... this one usually opens a can of worms ;)
Personally, I perfer the look of a planed rather than sanded board, even deliberately leaving hints in the surface that this was created by hand my yer average Mk1 semi-skimmed mushroom; I don't need the noise, don't need the dust and certainly don't need the numbness in my hands afterwards. Any subsequent treatment by abraisives is limited to applying wax with some 0000 grade steel wool...
Unfortunatly, that goes out the window with it comes to my use of moulding planes; I'm still very definately at the bottom of the learning curve there... the subsequent profile might be in the ballpark, but the finished quality needs some rescuing before I can live with it... sanding invariably results in a half respectable finish (if ya poke one eye n close the other that is)...
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
hang onto yer hat Buster... this one usually opens a can of worms ;)
I'm really hoping to avoid the BS and see what people are doing. I'm no expert at hand hand planing, I get a decent surface. I'm with you on the noise, dust, and numbness.
For the record I don't think sanding is necessary. Sometimes I do it, other times I don't.
Buster,
I'm a newbie and could be wrong but I think a lot of the confusion comes from different objectives relative to the look one is after (Midnight hints at this). Using hand planes and scrapers creates a smooth surface quite flat with tiny ridges. Using sandpaper after the planes produces a flatter piece of wood. When you apply polish the light produces a different finished look.
Recently I followed Philip Lowe's protocol where he planes, scrapes and then sands with 100, 150, 220. The finish was as smooth as glass...if that is what you want
Edited 10/19/2007 9:03 pm ET by BG
It all depends ...
on things like
- the type of wood
- the particular piece of that type of wood
- the type of plane I'm using - e.g., whether it allows for a finish ready surface (think 78 doing cross grain work)
- the type of piece I'm making - more refined or less
Often I'll break edges with a few scrubs 'o 220
I rarely use sandpaper on surfaces unless I;m having tearout fits with a tough grain (curly - birdseye - swirl around a knot)
Buster
I am going to take a different position on an old debate for the fun of discussion. After the last debate: planing vs sandpaper I thought I would do a little experimenting not to prove a point but to satisfy myself. I chose the lathe, a few spindles(legs and stretchers) my old skew and some sandpaper. Its easier to let the object spin than push the plane to make a point about cutting vs abrasion.
When I cut a good bead with my skew, I can not get it to look better with sandpaper of any grit. None. The cutting edge of the tool is so sharp, the end grain on the spindle feature shines. Even when I used 1200 paper, it dulled the surface a bit.
On the other hand.. some surfaces that were scraped were improved with the use of paper and going to a finer grit made it really nice.
After planing and scraping with a sharp finish scraper I think 220 is a good starting grit. If you see lines in the work as you sand, you might need to go back.
Buster,
In my shop I use sandpaper. It's not my favorite job, so I got a Performax 22-44 last year. I plan to get an edge sander in the couple of years too. I still palm sand and hand sand, but the 22-44 has cut my sanding down about 75%. I usually stop sanding around the 220 grit mark. After that I just seem to be polishing the wood, not sanding. Opinion..Not fact.
I usually stop sanding around the 220 grit mark. After that I just seem to be polishing the wood, not sanding. Opinion..Not fact.OK so I'm not a real finisher but it turns out Ok for me.. Not working for a prize!I do that but I never go beyond fresh 120 grit using sand paper. I save my 'used' 120.. OK I knock out the dust first.. And sand with that if I have to. I usually use Tung oil on the raw wood and sand the first coat with the 'used papers'.. Additional coats I always use different grades of the 3M-Pads...After each sanding I will vacuum off the surface using a brush and try not to scratch anything..AND I have found a reasonable test for the surface.. Wipe a old nylon sock across it and see if it catches on anything.OK, so I like women's nylons! :>)
Buster,
First, apologies for any "teaching you to suck an egg" aspect of the following rambles. Perhaps I should post to ALL.
I sanded for about 9 years before turning to planes. I used belt and RO sanders, sometimes finishing with hand sanding employing rubber profile "blocks" or using a flat hardwood block. It is possible to get a very smooth and flat (or other shape) on the surface with careful sanding and some means of checking (eg like a straight edge for flatness or a profile template for a curved edge).
The resultant surfaces do not look shiny until the finish goes on. After that, the surface can look as good (read unblemished with grain popping) as you like. There is an FWW article along these lines that compared surfaces from planing, scraping and sanding; they only look different in terms of smoothness/grain-pop until the finish goes on (all things being equal). When finished, they looked the same.
As others have noted, you need to sand with a good technique and to the right grit for the wood used. Also, you will need machine assistance if there is significant material to remove. Machines come at the price of noise; dust and vibration too, unless you get Festool or similar quality of engineering and dust removal technology.
* Generally, open grain and/or fibrous woods like oak require lesser final grits (eg around 180, in my experience) than do close grained woods (eg hard maple or dense cherry can be sanded to 320 and look better than 240).
) Using a finer grit does start to burnish the wood. But burnishing is sometimes a help, if a super-smooth surface is wanted. It works best when fine-sanding a dried finsh, to help fill grain a little with combined finish/wood dust in stuff like mahogany or teak. I have gone to 600 grit when doing this; it seems to work.
* A good RO sander that will not leave swirl marks is needed (that Festool or similar). It also helps if it can be mounted with a hard pad for flat surfaces, to aid in avoidance of dips or rounded-over edges.
* A belt sander needs a sanding frame to avoid dig-ins or other over-sanding accidents, especially with very large, flat surfaces.
* Proper technique is just as important with sanding as it is with planing or scraping. Sanding does require the acquisition of skill through understanding and practice, just as with any other WW method.
* Good sandpaper makes a difference - hard grits, well bonded and with "helpers" such as the stearates (I think that's the right term) that make the paper less likely to clog. Dust removal also helps a great deal (avoids clogging, floating of the sander above the work on a dust layer and the possibility of a Big Scratch from a bit of grit trapped between sander and work surface).
If you sand rather than plane, it will take longer to remove any significant amount of material. If you have a large tabletop with ledges, bumps and so forth, a belt sander in a sanding frame will flatten it and smooth it (with maybe the final 2 grits done with an RO after flatness is achieved). But a try plane will do the flattening a lot quicker; and a smoother can go faster than an RO for a given area.
Unless you have a good plane/blade at the optimum angle, many difficult timbers (reversing hard grain) will tend to tear out when planed. Some scrape to fix this tear out whilst others sand. Again, scraping seems marginally faster than sanding; but it is best to get a plane/technique that will avoid the tear out altogether (or leave an absolute minimum to sand away by hand).
Until recently, I found even the best planed-smooth surfaces still needed a quick final hand sand to get rid of plane track marks from the corners of the blade. I have been persuaded to try a slightly cambered blade and this does reduce or even eliminate the track marks (and hence the need for a final sand).
Use of a plane also leaves just enough evidence (eg small undulations from that cambered blade) to mark the surface as planed rather than sanded. I have found that I like this look on most surfaces, even though you have to scrutinise to find the evidence. But this is just a matter of taste and may be as much psychological as reflecting any meaningful difference in reality, between a sanded and planed surface.
In short - both methods (sanding & planing/scraping) work to flatten, shape and smooth surfaces. Take your choice, along with the "costs" of each. I've come to prefer planing, myself; but I know from experience that sanding works just as well, in terms of the result.
Lataxe
Edited 10/21/2007 12:37 pm ET by Lataxe
Edited 10/21/2007 12:41 pm ET by Lataxe
Slight digression , Squire, but feel the need to hi light something you said:
"Use of a plane also leaves just enough evidence (eg small undulations from that cambered blade) to mark the surface as planed rather than sanded. I have found that I like this look on most surfaces, even though you have to scrutinise to find the evidence."
That is one of the reasons why it is good to have a slight camber on the smoother blade-one still takes a full width shaving (no matter what that person says), the shavings are feathered at the sides. The look you refer to is the desirable appearance of a hand made piece, rather than what comes from a wide belt sanding machine- and certainly does not include those plane tracks that result from square irons even when the corners are off...Philip Marcou
As an aside to Phillip's comments, my brother-in-law just had wood flooring installed at a condo he owns on the Chesapeake Bay. The container described it as "hand scraped". I was amused that someone would pay for something that looked as if it were attacked lengthwise with a scrub plane! Defintely not hand scraped and probably not hand planed, but I would think "scalloped" on some sort of monster machine!
The wood was one of those modern ultra dense, multi-layered plywood concoctions.
Maybe he meant to say "hand scrubbed" (;)Philip Marcou
I've looked at the stuff, shaken my head and still customers ask for it. I think its as worthless as tits on a bull. I don't see any positive reason to use the stuff other than fool a person while you are "flipping a house" for a buck. I don't mean to sound like a hard headed old timer but the 3//4" tongue and groove is wonderful stuff and it endures where this other stuff falls short.
I'm with you! I certainly wasn't promoting it! To tell the truth, my BIL was touting this as a great premium product. I viewed it pretty much the same as taking a chain to chest to "antique" it! You want that look, turn my kids and their friends loose on it.
As I previously said, the flooring looked like someone took a scrub plane to it, but entirely lengthwise! Way to contrived. I wouldn't have paid 2 cents for the flooring and I certainly wouldn't have paid someone to install it. To each his own I guess!
One problem with sanding versus planing is that some woods have hard and soft areas. For instance southern yellow pine has yellow areas that are harder than the whiter areas. An extensive sanding operation on these woods will remove more from the softer areas than from the harder areas therefore creating a surface that is wavy. The more sanding that is done to these woods the worst this condition gets. However if the surfaces of these woods are planed flat and then is sanded just enough to create a consistent scratch pattern then these surfaces are considerably flatter than the surface that had endured the whole gamut of sanding grits from 80 up thru 220.
Even though some say they can't tell the difference in surfaces under the finish, I can certainly discern some differences while I am doing the finishing. When I apply water based dye stains to surfaces that have endured the whole sanding process I get considerable grain raising, however when I plane surfaces and then lightly sand them I get very little grain raising and this saves me from having to go back and do additional sanding to cut down the raised grain. The look at the end may be the same but one requires less work.
To answer the original poster's questions, I use planes and scrapers to eliminate as much sanding as possible. On flat surfaces on most hardwoods I use only one grit after planing, which one depends on how I want the color to absorb. (lighter,darker,etc.)
Ron
Buster
I hand plane the long grain surfaces and sand the end grain,if exposed. I make sure the plane iron is sharp and well tuned for a fine cut. I like the feel of a surface that has been planed v. sanding. Tom
Here is some grist for the mill.
Sanding wood--hard or soft--beyond 220 does little more than burnish the wood making staining difficult. This is particularly true if you are using a pigment stain which sits on the surface and relies on "nooks and crannies" to impart color. Softer more porous woods can be sanded to to 220 but harder less absorbent woods may stain best if only sanded to 150.
A number of years ago a large cabinet/custom furniture shop I was involved with did series of adhesion tests with various finishes and sealers. As part of this test we explored adhesion based on sanding grit. We found about the same adhesion up to 180 - 220. Beyond 220 adhesion dropped off due to burnishing of the underlying wood particularly when non-linear machine sanders were used. This was tested on birch panels. We also found that the resulting smoothness of the first coat of finish was not materially affected by the smoothness of the underlying wood for sandpaper grits between 150 - 220.. The smoothest surface substrate for final finishes was obtained by sanding lightly after the first coat of finish was applied and dry. Which makes the case for a thinned first coat of finish.
So our conclusion was that sanding beyond 180-220 was not necessary and could be actually detrimental.
But, most important was that there was a big appearance affect if the surface was not HAND sanded in the direction of the grain using the highest grit used on the sanding machine. A flat pad sander produced a much flatter surface than a ROS. However, both required final hand sanding with the grain for optimum appearance. If not hand sanded, swirl scratches could show. Final hand sanding using a sanding pad in the direction of the grain is a must.
To carry it one step further, sanding at 320-400 grit after the first coat and subsequent coats was the optimum. No improved appearance was noticed by between coat sanding beyond 400 for varnish. 400 was the sweet spot for thinner finishes. Between coat sanding was always done by hand whether for flattening or for adhesion.
I think you will find similar thoughts in the popular finishing books but YMMV.
Finally, the first coat of ANY finish will raise little shards of wood and cause them to raise whether the surface was sanded, planed or scraped. When the first coat of finish dries these hardened shards are what causes the surface to feel rough. Sanding with 320 paper will remove these hardened shards and subsequent coats will go on smoother. So, smoothness counts after the first coat of finish, but not much before that.
I think this issue is entirely about flatness on wider surfaces and whether or not your preferred finish requires sanding between coats.
If finish needs sanding between coats, it will tend to get cut through on high points of scallops and this will show badly when final finish is smoothed or burnished, therefore flatness is required which means sanding.
The surface texture and lustre from a sharp blade cannot be beaten, but flatness is a different issue.
I wrote about this in my third book Handtools and Methods.
David
For me, all edged tools (hand planes, chisels, scrapers, etc) are an efficient way to deal with the inevitable imperfections of woodworking. Yes, the imperfections can be sanded out, but why spend an hour with sandpaper to do something that an edged tool can do in a few minutes.
I always sand my work. It may be my technique, but if I don't sand, I often see burnish marks when I do the finish.
I don't think there is anything wrong with your technique.
I think those burnish marks are caused by the slight scalloping from hand plane scraper plane or hand scraper (on wide surfaces like table tops).
This is why I believe some sanding is necessary to achieve flatness, if the finish requires sanding between coats.
David
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