Experimenting with PSA sanding mandrel
Now that I have done my penance of hand sanding a blade to a polish I am working on a power assisted method.
Having read about PSA disks and not wanting to wait for one to be delivered and not being sure about its hardness I made one from leather. I have a 3/4 inch PSA disk holder that I bought and I find it way too hard. I like my disks to have more give, it prevents deep gouged scratch marks. Again, not wanting to wait for leather to arrive I used 2 1/2" inches of my belt. It was way too long :).
I decided to make it 1 1/4" in diameter, although not standard I prefer the larger disk.
Made from two pieces of leather, the screw mandrell is attached to the smaller piece, I added two lock washers on both sides of the leather to prevent slipage. Then the smaller disk is glued to the larger one with polyurethane glue. I Tried using contact cement but it would come off during spinning.
I also used wet/dry sandpaper for the disks mainly because I wanted more grit variety. I don't bother using wax paper on the back, just stack the disks one on top of the other. The adhesive does not stick well to the rough surface, leaves no deposit and does not pull off the abrasive particles. I got the idea from the PSA sandpaper rolls for my profile sander. No wax paper there either.
The stack of disks you see is about 50 x 320 grit disks, stands about 3/4" high. Very compact. I cut them with an OLFA circle cutter but will be making myself a rotating punch. The circle cutter is plastic so it is not very dimensionally stable and also leaves a pin hole at the center.
http://www.winpte.com/str8/PSAMandrel.jpg
The bottom two pictures is my Butchered Wade & Butcher. A few months ago I tried restoring it. It was badly pitted and I got so frustrated that I de-pitted it with a 40 grit stone in the dremel. Needless to say kids, don't try that at home.
In the before picture I evened out the 40 grit dissaster on 120 grit belt sander. In the after picture I sanded it with 150, 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 2000 grits and polished with a polishing compound. The blade part was done by hand as practice a week ago, the tang with the PSA discs yesterday.
Using the PSA discs is a lot less effort, it is actually enjoyable.
