"Greg Guarino" wrote in message

The last couple of weekends have been busy and thus unproductive
woodworking-wise. I'm trying to come up with an efficient regime to sand
the lots and lots of repetitive parts that make up the two shelf units
I'm building.

I made myself a little "corral" just big enough to immobilize four 9" x
1.5" pieces at a time (four 1/2" ply "fences" in a rectangle) for
sanding. I will probably do something similar for the other size parts.
Per advice here (distilled from several posters) I'm going to use (at
least) 120 and 150 grit. The project is made of standard Lowe's-issue
S4S red oak.

I have a random orbit sander and an old (1960's vintage, chrome)
third-sheet finish sander. I'm wondering if I could possibly streamline
the process by using both.

Sure. One grit on one, the other grit on the other.

Keep in mind that the finer grit is just to remove scratch marks made by the
coarser; that means that the coarser grit sanding should be thorough to
remove any mill marks, etc. IME, the proper sanding time is about twice as
long as what I think it should be

You might want to invest in a 1/4 sheet orbital sander; they are inexpensive
and I still prefer then to the ROS. And if you ever come across a now
defunct Porter-Cable 505 half sheet sander I would strongly suggest that you
buy it. They aren't much good on small things but on larger ones they are
the best finishing sanders I have ever used due, primarily, to the weight
and the thick felt pad.

--

dadiOH
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