William Ng sanding blocks

[Jerome Hanby]

Anyone see his sanding blocks in the Scrapper Sharpening episode that the Wood Whisperer posted? Pretty simple, but it looks perfect. Best I can tell they are about 3/4" thick and sized so that a half sheet of paper will wrap around them. The corners are rounded a little and one edge has a slot cut in it that a tapered, slightly over long spline wedges into to hold the paper. Looks like the two faces are lined with cork. In the video it looked like he had a whole stack of them, each loaded with a different grit. Definitely not rocket science, but looks very usable and very simple to crank out a dozen or so. Saw online that Hobby Lobby has rolls of cork with an adhesive backing for about $6.00. Looks like enough cork to build sanding blocks until the end of time. Link (http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?ItemId=165036) to the cork if anyone is interested. You can google "William Ng sanding block" and find some discussion and pictures, but the ones I saw all seemed to be missing the nicer features (no cork, no roundovers, spline not tapered, spline too short for easy removal, made from plywood). If I get some made this weekend I'll post some pictures. I've got a lot of short off cuts i haven't been able to bring myself to throw out, maybe this is a good use for them!

[Mike Henderson]

Actually, that sanding block is one of the beginning projects they teach at Cerritos College woodworking program. Every student who goes through the program has at least one of those. I'll see if I can find mine and post a picture.

Cutting the wedge is a bit tricky because it's beveled on both sides. Not hard to do but there's a technique for doing it.

Mike

[Van Huskey]

Very interested in seeing a "build" thread on these. Sanding blocks are simple buy extremely useful.

[Jerome Hanby]

Thanks Mike. To bevel both sides, can you tilt the table saw a few degrees, make the face cut, then go back to 90, move the fence to the other side of the blade, then cut the other face? Would be thin so would have to work out some safe way of feeding it.

[Mike Henderson]

If I recall, what we did was tilt the saw blade a bit to cut one side, then reverse the wood and adjust the rip fence and make the second cut. The second cut is made close to the rip fence. It's easier to do with a left tilt saw. All this is depending on my memory - it's been quite a while since I took the class. You could certainly do it the way you describe.

Here's a couple of pictures of mine. It's pretty dirty - I used it for some wet sanding.

It's designed for a full sheet of sandpaper. It's 3" wide, 11" long and the wood part is 3/4" before you put the cork on both sides. It's okay, but mostly I use a piece of wood and wrap a piece of sandpaper around it.

Mike

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[Jerome Hanby]

Thanks! Think I'm going to make mine pretty much the same way except half the length (1/2 sheet size). Heck these things are going to be so easy to mass produce, I think I'll just crank out a bunch half and full length!

Rethinking that taper after reading your reply, seems like I could use taller stock and just crank up the blade height just enough for the height of the tapered side, my saw is a right tilt so my fence would be to the left, run the material through to make that taper on one side, then spin it around and run the other side keeping the non tapered top part of the material pressed tightly against the fence.