Make a sanding pad for your electric drill.
"A good turning needs a good finish needs good sanding."
| If you have not tried power sanding with an electric drill and velcro backed sanding pads, but want to try, or for that matter like it and want more pads, here is how to have them for pennies. You need some scrap 3/4" plywood, a couple of 1/4" washers, a couple of 1/4" nuts, a 2 1/2" long, 1/4" carriage bolt, a strip of 2" wide velcro (hook side) and a piece of rubber backing material. I use the stuff from a camper's sleeping pad, but an old mouse pad will do. |
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| Draw a 2" or so circle on the ply and drill through the center with a 1/4" drill. Cut the head off the carriage bolt. Choose a spade bit for countersinking the washer and nut in the plywood. I use a spade bit instead of a Forstner because the tip of the spade will automatically center the countersink cut much like a counterbore. |
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| The disk is countersunk and cut from the ply with the bandsaw. |
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| Then the assembly is made with nut, washer, disk, washer, nut. I put a drop of thin CA on the nut threads to make sure they do not come loose. |
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| Then I mount the whole thing in a Jacob's chuck on the lathe. Alternately you could use a drill press or even a hand drill and rasp it to shape. I turn it down to a little under 2" diameter although you can work to whatever size suits you. |
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| Pause for a moment and take out a 5" disk for your random orbital sander. Mine uses 8 holes for dust collection. Using a disk cut to under 2" note that you can draw 4 circles on that 5" disk. |
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| Actually, I am not bothering to cut out the circles, I just cut the disk into quarters. |
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| With the hot glue gun, put a strong bead around the disk, attach the rubber pad to it and trim it roughly to the disk. |
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| Smear hot glue over the rubber pad and attach the velcro strip. If you are making a 3" pad, a strip of 2" velcro down the center will work well. |
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| Now remount on the Jacob's chuck and turn down and clean. |
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| Put one of those quarters on the velcro and you are set to go. I have trimmed a bit of the excess but even that is not necessary. It is certainly not necessary to cut to a perfect circle. All that is needed now is to mount the shaft in your electric drill and turn a bowl to sand. |
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I was going to replace this page but decided instead to do a variation on the theme.
If you make one please let me know how it turned out.
© 2006 copyright Darrell Feltmate, Around the Woods, Wood Turning Techniques