Ah, the sanding article, bane of my existance. I have two segments to
go. One on accessories for power sanding (pads, extensions, etc.) that I
just can't get very excited about, and the big study of the abrasive
types that has been driving me nuts. It is much harder to objectively
measure sand paper in a meaningful way that I expected. A typical
objective measure is how much material they remove in a specified amount
of time for a given pressure. That can be set up, but it really isn't
all that meaninful to woodturners. Of greater interest IMO is whether
they have uniform grain size and that they don't load, and that the
sandpaper grains have good life and stick to the disk, and that the
velcro backing sticks to the abrasive paper. These have not been such
easy things to measure. I just start to get a sense that I have a
technique and then I find that there is so much variability within a
specific sandpaper brand, that no consistent measurements can be made.
It is also very hard to isolate out all the variables. How does one
establish at what temperarature delamination of the backing occurs, and
how that meaningfully translates to actual practice. How does one
measure just the heat sensitivity of the loops on the velcro backing in
a meaningful way. I'm still working on it, but it may in the end result
in an impressionistic than the objective quantitative comparisions I has
hoped to make.

Lyn

Owen Lowe wrote:
In article et,
"Lyn J. Mangiameli" wrote:


I didn't recommend it to the original poster as it sounded like he was
desirous of a more versatile system.


It is at least a few months away, but I am working towards a comparative
review of most of the sharpening sytems, both grinders/sanders and
jigging systems. It's not been such a simple project, both because of
the range of set ups possible, and that it becomes a rather expensive
undertaking when most of the options are included.


Thanks Lyn. I wasn't that familiar with Ellsworth's jig and had vague
recollections about it being only useable with one size gouge - but that
may not be a big deal if the OP doesn't currently have a bowl gouge and
could buy the jig and gouge size to match.

Did you ever finish the sanding series? I recall two (?) installments
but was thinking you were going to write about the brands of abrasives
in the final article.