Woodturning: Sand Pepper Mill Body

Video Transcript

"During this section we are going to cover the sanding of the body. Generally what you do, a lot of the sand paper I have is in strip sheets but if you have a regular sheet of sand paper take your sheet, fold it into thirds. What this will do for you is it gives you some padding as you put the sand paper against the wood. I use a 120 to bring down most of the shape and then I'll use a 220 to finish it. The mahogany is a nice wood, it sands through fairly quickly. The lines you see as I do it, you'll see a dark line, I didn't do as nice a job as I could have or as I would liked to have with the tool but sanding will take it right out. What you want to make sure you don't see is any lines as you are sanding. Next I'll go back with the 220 grit and this gives you a nice smooth enough sanding, a smooth enough finish for the final. You can go if you want to 320 or 400 but for the type of finish that I will be using which is just a shellac based finish this gives me a smooth enough surface. As you sand keep your sand paper underneath so that if it happens to catch on anything it will go down. If you put yourself up on top you are going to jam your fingers and just rubbing on the handle look for any rough surfaces and that pretty much takes care of the sanding process."