Abranet Sanding Sheets- Leaving Scrapes & Streaks

[Patrick Holmes66]

Hello,

I love the dust-free aspect of using these Abranet sheets hooked up to an extractor. However, I'm finding small scrapes and streaks being left by Abranet sheets when I get down to 240 and finer grits. I've tried angling the pad at 45º to grain, as I read this as a suggestion here, or on another forum, but this has not really solved the problem.

Has anyone else had a similar issue, and found any solutions?

Appreciate any feedback. Thanks

[Rafael Herrera]

If you are sandind flat surfaces, you would not need to sand if you were to finish them with a smoothing plane.

[George Yetka]

In doing epoxy projects(very visable in epoxy) I learned if you get swirls toss that sheet and drop back to the grit below. For example if i'm sanding a typical project Ill sand 120/180/240. If i get swirls with the 240 Ill toss that sheet and drop to the 180 again to get them out and continue with new 240. I have been abranet pretty exclusively. I ordered 50 each 80/120/150/180/240. Then when I bought a deros it came with 100 each 80/120/180/240. So i've had little time to try anything else. Ive had this issue only a few times but I dont think its the paper as it wasnt brand new paper that it would happen with.

[Richard Coers]

Are you blowing off the work after each grit? A particle may be trapped from the last courser grit. Another thing is that many folks press down on the sander. You should just be "driving" the sander and let the weight of the sander do all the work. Are you using an intermediate pad between the pad and disc? Abranet advises that.

[Jimmy Harris]

What are you sanding? Is it finished wood? If so, what kind of finish and how long have you let it cure? If it's raw wood, what kind of wood?

To be honest, 240 is around where I switch to hand sanding. That also allows me to switch to sanding with the grain. And often above 320/400, I'll use a lubricant. Those higher grits usually don't take much work, and I like to run through them pretty quickly. So using a power sander usually slows me down, unlike with the coarse grits where actually can spend a lot of time working out imperfections. I like to do probably 80% of my work with grits 80 or less to get everything smooth and just how I like it. And then I quickly run through each of the finer grits, just long enough to remove the marks left by the previous grit.

[Patrick Holmes66]

I hand sand exclusively, sorry, should have said. I've found the issue on raw wood and on finishes. (shellac) I use the mirka hand- sanding blocks with extractor attachment. It could be that I just need to swap to a brand new sheet - I'll keep a closer eye on this, but if that's the case then the abranet sheets are not really lasting a great deal longer than good quality sand paper, and therefore there is little financial or environmental gain - it is dust free though. I think I'll just stick to the coarser grits and use traditional papers for finer sanding. Thanks for all of the feedback, really helpful.

[Kent A Bathurst]

I use the same setup, with no issue. When you are sanding - do you lift off the surface at the end of each pass? Instead of keeping contact as you work across the surface?

[Jimmy Harris]

Hard to say without seeing the sand "paper" in use. But aren't these washable? I know many of the other brands are (I prefer the 3M Xtract, largely because of cost). You might not need to swap them out, but rather just clean them off. Especially with a soft finish like shellac, you can heat up the finish and cause it to melt, then it can immediately reharden on the "paper" and leave chunks of the finish embedded. It's easy to spot when this happens.

Since you're using an extractor, this might not be possible. But I will often use naphtha as a lubricant while sanding shellac. It helps to limit buildup on the sandpaper and leaves a smoother surface. As a bonus, it controls dust. As a minus, it still makes a huge mess. Just not in the air. Shellac is really, really bad about melting and clogging up sandpaper if you don't use a lubricant. Though with shellac, I usually don't worry about small scratches, as a new layer of shellac will dissolve the old layers and any scratches along with it. So for the last layer, I'll either do nothing or buff it with something soft. Typically, only the last layer really concerns me. Every previous layer is nothing more than a support for the last layer to go on.

With raw wood, I don't know. I typically just try to go with the grain to hide any scratches once I get up to around 240 grit. I've used mineral spirits as a lubricant before for this, but I don't remember exactly why I chose to do that. I do remember it melting the plastic backing of my 3M sandpaper, and being infuriated by that and swearing off that sandpaper.

I think you can clean those mesh sanding discs, can you not? I know I've cleaned my 3M Xtract disks often. Depending on how bad they are, I'll hit them with a vacuum, peel them off and flex them to break off anything hard that's embedded, and sometimes run them under something like naphtha or soap and water. They last a long time, but they require a lot of maintenance in order to last a long time.

[Jimmy Harris]

One more thing I just thought of, how's the vacuum pressure? I'm wondering if the vacuum isn't pulling too hard, that it isn't sucking the pad down against the wood and putting too much pressure into the wood. Sometimes with my ROS, it won't spin if the vacuum is too strong, even when I'm putting resting the ROS on the wood with zero pressure or even the weight of my hand. But my vacuum hose has a little valve, and if I open that a quarter inch, it'll go back to spinning normally and still collect the same amount of dust.

[Rafael Herrera]

However, I'm finding small scrapes and streaks being left by Abranet sheets when I get down to 240 and finer grits. I've tried angling the pad at 45º to grain, as I read this as a suggestion here, or on another forum, but this has not really solved the problem.

Has anyone else had a similar issue, and found any solutions?


Yes, I see it all the time when I sand metal surfaces, it's more obvious there but the same thing happens on raw wood or finishes.

Whatever sandpaper grit you're using at any given stage, it can leave deeper scratch marks due to some particles being bigger than the nominal grit of the sandpaper. Another possibility is loose grit particles left laying around in your work area or sandpaper. Those scratches will be more difficult to erase because they're deeper and you need to abrade all the surface surrounding them.

If you're at your finishing stages of sanding, it's best to use slightly worn and well dusted sandpaper instead of brand new sheets. The brand new sheets are the ones more likely to have large stray particles.

I would not sand diagonal to the direction of the grain, specially on a surface that already has some kind of finish.

On your shellac finished surfaces, are you using sandpaper on it? You seem to imply that. I'd again suggest worn pads instead of brand new ones. Have you considered using premium steel wool instead of sandpaper? You could also try padding the shellac instead of brushing it on, sort of an abbreviated French polish or a straight French polish.