wet sanding

Take a clean rag and some clean water. wet the rag and wipe the surface of the wood after you sand it. This will cause a beard to stand up on the wood. Allow the surface moisture to dry for about 45 minutes and sand again. Repeat this process until you are satisfied. This will give a very smooth surface to finish. If you don’t wet sand the beard will usually stand up when you apply you stain or varnish. Yes it is worth the effort.

thanks grandpa , i’ll try it on my next project.

-- rick

Check this out too:

-- Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from poor judgement.

I wet sand a little different from most. I use tung oil and wet/dry sandpaper on my 1/4 sheet sander to wet sand rifle stocks. I dry sand to 220 grit on walnut or cherry and 320 grit on maple. I wet sand from 320 to 600 grit. The walnut needs the grain filled before finishing and the microscopic walnut and tung oil slurry fills the pores nicely. I put on several coats of tung oil by rubbing the last few coats in with fine steel wool and wiping up any excess so the tung oil fills the wood and isn’t on the surface. After sanding the surface flush and giving the tung oil time to harden, I finish my rifle stocks using tru oil, linspeed oil, or automoble clear coat. Maple must be dyed before it’s wet sanded with tung oil.

-- Hal, Tennessee http://www.first285.com

Thankls for the Video post. I learn a lot from him and wil;l; try these methods.

-- Just learning the craft my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ practiced.

Off subject. Nice Mustang in the pic. Yours? Did you restore it?
As for the sanding, read a little on the web, then get some scrap & experiment. I think there’s no substitute for playing around to learn stuff. -SST

-- Accuracy is not in your power tool, it's in you

shopsmithtom

yes i did restore the mustang , down to bare metal from the ground up . thats what prompted the wet sanding questions , i was wondering if the process is close to the same on wood .

-- rick

regardless of what you use to raise the beard, it will usually stand up and raise havoc. It can be raised using water, stain or whatever. I use water because it goes away and usually doesn’t cause a lot of problems. When we sand we cause the fibers to lay down. When they get wet they stand up so we need to sand them off.