Swirls. Is it the paper or the tool?
Question:I use a five inch, random orbit air sander. The pad is brand new. I use mostly, but not exclusively, 3M aluminum oxide open coat, 150 - 400 grit paper. The swirls (J-tracks if you will) are more noticeable depending on the species of wood in use. For example, on soft woods, the swirls don't show up until the final catalyzed lacquer is applied. On hard woods, the tracks show up right away, but are a huge pain to remove.
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Answers:
Probably a combination of both plus the pressure you apply while sanding.
You didn't mention what size orbit the sander has but a 5mm orbit is notorious for leaving tracks as opposed to a 3mm orbit which seems to do better.
Scrapers and planers are great for pre-sanding when the surface is uneven. However, they leave scrape marks especially
noticeable on figured wood, like walnut burl, for instance.
Stick to the higher grits for prefinish sanding. Hope this helps.
i never use a orbit sander when i'm sanding wood that i want to re-stain or varnish b/c of that reason. U always want to go w/ the grain of the wood & that never does. U need a strait sander bac n forth & depending on how bad off the wood is to start, coarse then down to med down to lt... if it's not that bad, then med to light. Depending again if u'r taking off OLD varnish or stain or jst preparin wood to stain or varnish.
ck out http://diynetwork.com they give u more things on sanding/varnish etc...
i'd jst stick to the strait sanding. my own experience.
orbital sander will work just fine i work in a custom cabinet shop we build custom kitchen's & bath's this is all we use!
use 120 grit paper, & if you want it smoother use 180 grit paperwe use sanpaper made by MIRKA . We use mostley oak,birch,cherry wood
Not the paper. Probably not the tool unless its too aggressive or maybe the rpms too low. Is it a quality tool?
Could you be pushing too hard?
I haven't had this problem.
Microplane makes stainless steel "paper" that's pretty neat. It shaves off the wood instead of grinding it.
I'm not there yet, but I know the best woodworkers use hand planes and cabinet scrapers to do there final smoothing.
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