Sanding and Finishing - Before my Festool!

For years I loathed sanding and finishing, particularly on the type of finicky artistic projects that I make, where the finish is critical to the success of the finished piece. Smoothing out some rough edges on a boat or a functional piece of wood is one thing, but perfecting a sanded finish on a non-functional artistic piece demands a level of perfection that I always found annoying and exhausting. I was always much more interested in building something than making it look pretty. I tried all manner of quick fixes and alternatives to make it go faster, or make it easier on my hands and arms, or reduce the dust, or reduce the number of finishing coats, etc, but nothing I did made the process any less loathsome. At one point I was so behind in my finishing that I had ran out of space to build anything new. I was stuck in a shitty situation where I had to actually finish and move a project out of my shop before I could get creative and start something new. My ideas were stacking up, but I had no space to do anything. I forced myself to catch up, but this time I was determined to develop a process that was more effective and less hateful for me.

Before I get into the details of what I found, I should make it clear that my experiences are going to be very specific to the type of work that I do. I work with long, twisted, and curved laminated strips of wood; if I was finishing table tops or cabinets, I am certain my conclusions would be very different. These strips are awkward and I try to retain the sharp edges that help give contrast to the finished pieces. This can make sanding, in particular, a nightmare.

So here is what I applied and what I found – roughly organized into four categories:

Develop a consistent process

Probably the biggest change I made was to develop and implement a standard process for finishing each piece of wood. This was accomplished by starting with a process that was functional, but then tweaking and keeping track of the positive improvements, and building on them. One of the biggest improvements was to recognize that the finishing process was actually a much longer continuous process than I had originally recognized. I started to define a continuous, repeatable process for each sculpture. To give an idea of what I am talking about, this is more or less what I came up with:

1. mark pieces for joining,

2. pull each piece off of the strong-back one at a time and drill,

3. trim ends, and join them starting with the outer most piece, and work towards the inside,

4. confirm the joined pieces look right and tweak as necessary,

5. disjoin the outer most piece for sanding,

6. sand with coarse grit,

7. sand with medium grit,

8. sand with fine grit,

9. rejoin and remove the next one,

10. repeat sanding process, and continue this until all pieces are sanded and the sculpture is ready for finish

11. then, label the pieces, disassemble a final time, hang them and dust them,

12. wood condition each lightly, let dry,

13. apply one coat of satin clear finish, let dry,

14. lightly sand

15. apply a second coat of satin clear finish, let dry,

16. re-assemble structure and glue joints… and done!

Having established a process that works, I am now able to do it the same way every time. Like anything, if you do something over and over you get better at it and it becomes more efficient and even enjoyable.

Specialize my workstation

Admittedly my shop space is modest. It is a basement workshop and very tight on space. I have it laid out a little like a galley kitchen and while small, I have done my best to make it efficient. What I recognized early on, was that having a workspace specifically tailored to the type of work I do was more important than having lots of space or many types of tools to fill it with.  I guess you could call it a “specialist” work space. If I had to build a dining room table or a set of bunkbeds I would be screwed, but it works well enough for building and finishing bentwood sculptures.

One major recurring issue is that I do not have a dust collector, and when I used to try and short cut my sanding process with various power sanders the dust was a nightmare (both in the shop and the rest of my house). Now most of the sanding I do is by hand, and I use an old sheet or t-shirt clamped to the top of my bench to “catch” and hold the majority of the sawdust on the benchtop. Provided I vacuum off my improvised tablecloth frequently, I can manage to keep the sawdust well contained.

One day I will build the super shop of my dreams, but for now I can keep it simple, do more with my hands, stay focused on my craft and still efficiently produce and finish high quality pieces of work.

Work with handtools

If I could get around as quickly and efficiently by walking as I could by driving, then I would choose to walk everywhere. Reality is though, that to operate in our modern society we need to embrace and take advantage of machines and technology. However, what I have learned through woodworking is that we often turn to machines to improve things that either do not need improving, or where the incremental increase in efficiency is so small that the headache of the machinery is not worth it. I have two examples:

The first I have already alluded to above, which is sanding by hand. I struggled for years trying to increase the efficiency of my sanding process by using a range of different hand and tabletop electric sanders. The best I could find was a small orbital sander that I could easily operate with one hand, but when I evaluated the cost/benefit compared to hand sanding I went back to manual. I figured that the orbital increased my speed by about 15%, but it was much more prone to over-sanding, taking down an edge, or ruining a profile – and it made a hell of a mess. Eventually I found that if I rotated through the appropriate grits of sand paper and used a good sanding block I was nearly as efficient and the quality was much higher. It also helps that good old fashioned sand paper bought in bulk is a lot cheaper than the hook and loop.

My second example is my miter saw, which I think is the greatest hand tool I have ever used. My dad originally bought it from an auction and I have permanently “borrowed” it. It is a table-top model with sliding guides that hold the 26” fine toothed saw in place. Other than looking super cool, I have found that it produces a more consistent angled cut with less tearing than the equivalent electric miter saw – and no screaming loud noises or sawdust flying in my house. But the biggest efficiency gain for me is that I can hold a curvy, twisted piece of laminated wood with my fingers literally sliding against the saw blade without any danger of chopping off any bits – safer and faster.

Keep a light touch on the finish

I typically wood condition, then apply 2-3 coats of satin clear finish. I have learned the hard way that it never pays to try and hurry a finish. It took me a long time to realize that the finish is actually the whole point of the piece, particularly where you want the wood to be the star of the show. For my work I rely on the natural colors in the laminates to provide the contrast in the finished piece. There are many ways to screw up a finish (old material, temperature, dust, raised grain, etc), but rushing to get it done was my killer. This might seem obvious to experienced woodworkers, but it took me awhile to figure out and accept the fact that it was actually faster to apply more thin coats as opposed to fewer thick ones. If I look at a sanded piece of laminated wood pre and post finish, my reaction goes from “that’s nifty looking” to “BAM”. If I nail a finish and the finish is a smooth and transparent as glass, there is no way the contrasting wood colors cannot capture attention.

Closer

Woodworking is all about solving problems, and every project has different problems in every step of the process. Design, lay-up, materials, shaping, joining, etc, all have problems that I have always enjoyed solving. Sanding and finishing have problems too, but they are often boring problems to solve. Trouble is, if not given sufficient attention, they can have the most devastating impacts to a finished piece. Experience has taught me how to avoid many of these problems, and if not, at least I now know how to efficiently solve them.