Most folks press the sandpaper into the piece itself because they're using
something like a drill motor or their fingers. This causes excess heat,
"following," where the paper glosses over hard and dives into softer areas,
and as others have noted, can turn the edges on an interrupted-edge turning,
even if you don't bark your knuckles.

What you do to avoid this when cutting is to support the tool first, then
bring it lightly to the piece, something you can continue if you rest your
sander as you rest a tool, before it ever contacts the piece. My setup is
shown at http://personalpages.tds.net/~upgeorge/pin%20two.htm and
http://personalpages.tds.net/~upgeorge/Smooth%20Two.htm ff.

Couple of things it does for you besides save on disks - allows you to make
the initial grit passes mostly across the gouge ridges by sanding at 10-2 or
7-5 o'clock to smooth quickly, then transition to the 2-4 or 8-10 o'clock
positions when finishing the grade to get more along or against the
direction of rotation - allows you to use the center of your discs on convex
surfaces.

While it works best on stiff backings like power-loc, you can also use it
with Velcro backs. The business of grabbing an edge and crimping the paper
can be well avoided as well. Support the handpiece, move the disk into the
interrupted area with the point of contact before nine o'clock, so you
slide, don't pinch, on the leading edge.

With a flex shaft under 50 bucks and a fractional horsepower motor usually
somewhere under someone's bench, it's cheap, easy, and can even be used with
the lathe stopped for final touch-ups.

"Derek Hartzell" wrote in message
...
What do you mean by "supported sanding"?

"George" george@least wrote in message
...
But much less if you do supported sanding.