Thread: What's the longest handsanding resto anyone has done?

I have a 1/4 hollow that I spent a minimum of 16 hours hand sanding, and even that still getting rid of all the pitting. Went through 4 or 5 sheets of 180 grit emery paper too.

Got it polished up and honed it too, but I hate the sight of the thing and will never shave with it.

20 hours or so? Something like that, just the blade sanding.
Oh and really drop down to 120 and work upwards from there. At 320 grit it will take far too long to remove pits.

Even 150-grit removes material more slowly than you would think. I measured the edge thickness of a blade after grinding and after hand sanding. I started sanding with 150-grit, trying to thin the blade out a little. All told, the results were barely measurable, with only five ten-thousandths of an inch removed. I guess this isn't too surprising considering how long it takes to creep up on the final thickness with a 150-Y belt on the grinder.

PDobson, what do you measure with? How do you get down to 0.0005 or the ten thousandths range??? Impressive!

I have a very nice set of Mitutoyo calipers that consistently read to half of a thousandth. It's also possible to interpolate with a quality micrometer. I purchased all of my precision measurement tools used which saves a lot of money.

Well, after my first real piece of crud, I had about 10 hours hand sanding, starting with 220 grit - 2000, followed by 3 1/2 hours of hand buffing. I use the dremmel with a 2" buffing wheel with 3 different compounds.

So my first resto took over 13 hours of hand work to complete.