Sanding 304 Stainless

[erikmannie]

So one thing that did *not* work was using the 40 grit on the orbital sander to flatten the material. I was doing this because I am running low on 50 grit belts, but I will just buy more 50 grit sanding belts because the belt sander does a great job of getting the material flat! When it is doing this, it sort of skates over the material (on the high spots).

Here is a picture of the belt sander exposing the parts that are not flat.





Once the material is completely flat, the belt sander is a beast. It is the perfect power level for this job.

Here is a picture of the material down to 50 grit from the belt sander. Here we are very happy that it is flat.





I’ve only seen that they sell the 3” X 18” sanding belts in 50, 80 and 120 grits, so I am sure that I will use the belt sander to get everything down to 120 grit since it does such a fantastic job.

*I sure am lucky that you guys recommended the belt sander*, and that my dad had one for me to borrow.

 

[francist]

I can only imagine the depth of knowledge you are acquiring with this job! Once again though, I am struck by your tenacity and honest approach to make it right. Bravo.

-frank

 

[erikmannie]

I can only imagine the depth of knowledge you are acquiring with this job! Once again though, I am struck by your tenacity and honest approach to make it right. Bravo.

-frank

Next time I would definitely take something like this to a professional metal finisher, either for bead blasting and/or graining.

He seems to want this delivered ASAP, and I didn’t want to delay the delivery date. Also, the nearest metal finisher from where I am is at least an hour drive each way. Taking it there to drop it off, & picking it up when it is ready would have been a minimum of 5 hours of driving.

 

[erikmannie]

I texted my brother & gave him a progress update & asked him to reimburse me $200 for sanding belts. There is a big time difference because he is in Berlin on business.

Were I to do this all over again, I would buy quality (e.g. Walter) abrasives. I thought I would save money by buying import abrasives, but they sure don’t last long.

I also watched some YouTube videos on sanding metal, and I saw that they were using different equipment. E.g. DA sanders, larger belt sanders, & a sander that had a 10-20mm thick foam pad between the sanding disc & the power tool. These are power tools that I would like to own, but I probably never will due to financial and space limitations.

 

[francist]

Do you still have some left to do? Given that you had such a large, contiguous batch I would be interested to see if you noticed any difference with the “edge lube” product but I see that you probably haven’t received it yet based on the estimated delivery. I use a similar (Formax) wax-type stick lube on my abrasive belts and it does improve performance and longevity. In my uses, anyway. The type of abrasive is important too — I use only the blue belts for metals. Any of the buff-coloured or brown I’ll use for wood but they have way too short a lifespan on metal. Again, my experiences.

-frank

 

[erikmannie]

Do you still have some left to do? Given that you had such a large, contiguous batch I would be interested to see if you noticed any difference with the “edge lube” product but I see that you probably haven’t received it yet based on the estimated delivery. I use a similar (Formax) wax-type stick lube on my abrasive belts and it does improve performance and longevity. In my uses, anyway.

-frank

I still have a good 40 hours of standing ahead of me, but I don’t expect the aforementioned lubricant to arrive for another 4-9 days. I should have ordered it sooner!

Of course, I am always using abrasives so I will post on the forum somewhere the results of using this lubricant.

 

[rwm]

I have been buying all Zirconia abrasives from Red Label Abrasives. The green Zirconia belts and discs seem to do much better on metals.

 

[jwmelvin]

I have been buying all Zirconia abrasives from Red Label Abrasives. The green Zirconia belts and discs seem to do much better on metals.

I agree. Zirconia and ceramic abrasives are a big step up from aluminum oxide.

 

[Weldingrod1]

You might try using a candle as lube... almost certainly better than nothing!

Sent from my SM-G715A using Tapatalk

 

[erikmannie]

There were a lot of developments yesterday on this project, one of which is that all of the moonscape (as I call it) has been flap-disced off. This material sure had an awful surface finish, but that is in the past now. Here are the other bullet points.

1. I saw that I can use 80- and then 120-grit sanding belts with the belt sander to get all of the surfaces flat and down to 120 grit. Note: I use 50 grit to begin with, & I ran out of 50 grit yesterday; I have an order for more at the local hardware store that comes in in 2 days time.

2. Once the surfaces are flat, the cheap, import 5” sanding discs work nicely, although they only last about 60 seconds. I will go through 120 grit (needed to sand the inside radius of the angle as well as the outside edge (which is also a radius)), 150-, 220-, 240- and 320-grits. This gets the entire work piece sanded down to 320 grit.

3. I was pleased to hear from my auto body contact (John’s Auto Body in Santa Rosa, CA) that he will accept this clearcoat job, and only have a 7 day turnaround. He said that I could sand it down as fine as 400 grit, but when I bought sandpaper they were out of 400 grit. 320 grit will have to be good enough here.

4. I had bought too many coarse sanding discs, & not enough fine sanding discs. I bought back the coarse ones from my brother, & I paid for 50 quantity sanding discs in each of 120, 150, 220, 240 and 320 grits. 250 sanding discs only cost about $90 delivered.