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Easy hold-down while sanding with power.

5K views 15 replies 13 participants last post by  LeeBarker 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Whether you use a vibrating sander or an orbital here is an easy way to hold the work.

Simply put a piece of short nap carpet on your bench large enough to put the work on.

It keeps the work from moving with only the slightest touch on your part.

An added benefit is that it also catches most of the fine dust. You simply take it outside when finished and smack it against a tree to clean it up.

Try it out. Some places sell small squares of this kind of carpet for a $1 or even less.
 
#6 ·
I use rubber drawer liner from the dollar store. My wife got over-zealous when we bought the house, and we have about a dozen extra rolls of it. Works real nice and I don't feel bad about throwing it out when it's ratty.
 
#11 · (Edited by Moderator)
Thats a pretty good idea…

I spend an inordinate amout of time thinking about how to do things, even as simple as your idea…

A several weeks ago I actually thought that if I had resaw capibilities for cutting veneers I wondered how I could get it thin enough to actually use…

The problem is I dont have a planer and may never have one (just really dont need one)...

I realized that for my purposes I could use double sided wide scotch tape to adhere it to a flat surface when running over it with a hand plane or a sanding block…

I thought about that for years when I do nothing.

Now I need a piece of carpet also.
 
#12 ·
I use the drawer rubber liner, but there seem to be too types, large hole pattern and small hole pattern. The small one is less grippy, but the large hole seems to catch on sanders and routers easier. For assembly of my guitars, it's a big terrycloth towel.
 
#14 ·
Marty, after I finished my basement rooms I had the carpet remnants rolled up in the garage. I decided one day to use it for sanding when I got tired of all my tools vibrating off the bench and falling to the floor. Now the wood stays put and the dust is caught in the nap of the carpet. Worked out pretty well.
 
#16 ·
The risk with the carpet is that something harder than what you're sanding gets threaded in there and you flip over the door or whatever to sand the other side and ugliness happens underneath. I much prefer the sanding mats which you can insure are free of bad stuff. Most of my sanding is done over a sanding table, so the dust collection feature of the carpet is moot.

Kindly,

Lee
 
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