In this video, I want to tell you all about sandpapers and their grit ratings and
how the different kinds apply to woodworking. All sandpaper has a number that refers to how coarse or fine it is and that number is called the
grit rating. This piece of paper here P100. That means it's a 100 grit
sandpaper, which means that on every square inch of the surface there are approximately
100 abrasive particles. So as you could imagine, the smaller the number here, the coarser the sandpaper is
Now 100 is, that's about what I start with when I'm sanding
softwood. Softwood that's in good condition. So fairly smooth softwood. Maybe smooth softwood that doesn't have any
mismatch between the joints, for instance. Sometimes when you're doing woodworking you have to glue pieces of wood together on their edge to get the kind of width you need and
sometimes those pieces might not be level. There might be a bit of a mismatch there
So wherever there's a lot of wood to remove, either because the wood is rough or because you've got a
slightly misaligned joint to line up, you'll want to go with something
coarser than 100 grit. The coarsest I ever use on wood is 80
This is a round disc for a 6-inch random orbit sander. I'll be telling you more about these machines later
But 80 grit, either in this form or in sheet form, that's the that's the coarsest that I would use on any kind of wood
And it's very important, vital in fact, that you sand incrementally. So if we're starting with, say, an 80 grit abrasive
then the next one we would want to go with, and sanding again, would be
100 grit or or maybe 120. There's a package of 120. But going from 80 to 120, that's going from coarser to finer. That's the biggest jump we would want to do
If we went any bigger than that, we would not be removing the 80 grit scratches
that existed on the wood because of our previous sanding. All we would be doing is smoothening off the tops of
these abrasion marks. We wouldn't actually be going right back down to the wood. We wouldn't be getting the smoothness that we want
After 120, we're going to want to use 180. That's a reasonable jump, a little bit finer
and there you go. There's the 180 number. Now 180 is not as smooth as
you want for proper, high-quality wood finishing. After 180, I'm going to take it to 220. So once again, this is sanding steps going through
smoothening all of the project parts with the 80, with the 120, with the 180, and then the 220
That'll be enough. This is fairly fine as these things go. So
you don't need to go any finer than that generally, but sometimes with hardwoods that you want a really smooth finish on, you might go to 320
So you can go from 220 to 320. That sounds like a pretty big jump numerically, but it does work
in real life. All of these grit numbers apply to sheet sandpaper, which can be used by hand or in certain machines
It does apply to discs. Certain kinds of sanders use discs, and it does also apply to belts
because there's a thing called a belt sander, which I'll be explaining all about later. Grit ratings are universal across the board
and if you're thinking, wow, Steve, that's a fair number of different kinds of sandpapers, and the answer is yes. If you want to get good at this
you do have to stock a fair number of sandpapers, and they're not cheap. I mean, it could be, you know, where I live
it could be a couple of dollars a sheet for some of the good stuff. You can get very, very
inexpensive sandpapers that have the same grit ratings, but the cheaper sandpapers aren't going to last as long
They're actually more expensive in the long run, because the premium quality papers
they just last a long time before they wear out. So you need something to keep all of this in order
and just before I finish up with this video, let's go over and I'll show you how I keep my sandpapers organized, ready to go
without anything getting wasted, or curling up, or torn, or crumpled up
So come and take a look at my sandpaper drawer here