How to sand a table top without getting waves

JD, Redwood is pretty soft, so I don’t think you’ll get away without sanding deeper into the sofert grain as apposed to the hard grain. I had a friend that built his cabinets using Doug Fir plywood for the doors. He and his wife had over a 100 hours sanding those doors just to get the effect you are getting accidentally…. Oh well…........ Jerry (in Tucson)

-- Jerry (in Tucson)

Jerry gave the answer I was going to give so I’ll just add: GREAT looking table top!

-- " I'll try to be nicer, if you'll try to be smarter" gfadvm

Yeah, what nubs said. Redwood is soft, but not consistently so. The more you sand the more you erode the soft areas. The table looks great btw, to avoid the waves use a hardwood.

-- Bondo Gaposis

Use hand planes and scrapers.

Thanks for the compliments and suggestions. Much appreciated. I will post final pictures in a few days…

-- J.D. Williams

If you want flat, you have to use a platen a lot bigger than a 6” diameter disc. You could use a sander that has at least one sheet of area, or a long board, and keep it moving over the entire surface, not just sanding one area that appears rough. This works for glass-smooth auto finishes, but you may not want to go that extreme. I’ve made wood projects stone flat using this method. I use a long straightedge, and even a laser to check flatness, to install machinery that has to be dead flat to within a few thousandths over many yards. It takes patience, believe me. I have hand-scraped flooring in my house, because it is what my wife likes. I can do that too, but in this case, I bought it, as I don’t have time for it, doing my regular job (mechanical engineer).

Would something like this do the trick?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rockwell-Porter-Cable-505-Half-Sheet-Finishing-Sander-/131223969375?pt=Sanders_Sandblasters&hash=item1e8d8ede5f

-- J.D. Williams

Would something like this do the trick?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rockwell-Porter-Cable-505-Half-Sheet-Finishing-Sander-/131223969375?pt=Sanders_Sandblasters&hash=item1e8d8ede5f

- JDWilliams

I don’t think so.
I replaced one of those with a 5” ROS and found it far superior.

A stroke sander might help. Good excuse to buy one to see. :^)

Cabinet scraper bud. I use on softwoods like cypress all the time. It’s a lot of elbow grease but the scraped surface needs very little sanding.

-- Shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang bang. I am. The warrior.

TheFridge – could you shoot me a link to what you are suggesting?

-- J.D. Williams

TheFridge – could you shoot me a link to what you are suggesting?

- JDWilliams

-- Ken from Ontario

You pretty much have your answer. Just wanted to say, beautiful table top. .

-- Mother Nature created it, I just assemble it.

Forgot, Welcome to Lumberjocks

first thing to learn, wood is rarely perfect. Enjoy the journey of learning how to deal with it.

-- Mother Nature created it, I just assemble it.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=68491&cat=1,41182

Welcome to Lumber Jocks and that’s a fine looking red wood

table top!