- So you wanna know about sanding your project,
the 101, the basics in order just to get started.
So let's do that today and I'm gonna talk you
through some stuff to make this an easy experience for you.
It doesn't need to be hard
and it doesn't need to be complicated.
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The first thing I need you to do,
regardless of what tool or method or finish you're going for
is I need you to wear a respirator, okay.
You're atomizing resin right now.
And that means you can inhale it.
I don't want you to inhale resin, that's no good.
If you haven't watched our safety video
about how to be smart when working with resins,
check that out too.
It's a really important piece of this process.
So think safety first, get your glasses on,
get that respirator on and be safe.
We should know a few technical things.
So let's dive into some technical information real quick
to make sure you know how to navigate these stuff.
Now I could do like the normal two camera stuff,
but I kinda wanna try something different.
So we're going to hook up this iPad to a TV
that we actually grabbed.
Joe, would you wheel that in for me, man?
My guy, I don't wanna.
Thank you.
It's kind of fun, right?
Also, I gotta put on my glasses
for night driving and looking at screens.
I look like a news anchor right now, don't I.
If you like the fact that we're doing this,
do me a favor and like hit the actual like button
on this video or leave me a comment or something
telling me that you wanna see more of this.
I do explains videos
and maybe we'll do our explains like this now.
All right, so
here is our surface that we're going to sand,
you can see it has bumps and kind of imperfections
within it.
And we wanna get rid of those.
We want this to be flat so that it's a beautiful finish.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna sand
the top surface and we're going to remove
all of that imperfections.
What we'll do is we'll grab a,
I'm gonna say a grit of sandpaper, that's pretty aggressive,
like a 40 grit.
And what we're gonna do is just cut off the top
of that surface.
That's not pretty, right?
We have scratches in that still.
So we need to get rid of the scratches.
We just put into the piece that got rid of
the actual imperfections from the beginning.
So say from 40 to 60 and do another pass.
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And that makes it better like much better,
but there's still imperfections.
So let's go to 80 grit.
That's better.
120.
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220.
It's already a lot more uniform than it was at 40 grit,
but we still have a lot of imperfections.
This isn't gonna be glossy.
This isn't gonna be the beautiful finish we want.
So we need to keep going.
I mean, we need to really keep going.
This is a pretty high grit and look at the actual surface.
It's pretty uniform, it's pretty flat.
And I've got this grit, which is really our brush here.
We're up to like the thousands of level right now.
Now when we get all the way up here where
it's a very very fine high grit, let's say like a 4,000,
we're just gonna hit it with some Polish.
And that gives us a very very uniform surface.
That's really really smooth in a high gloss finish.
So that's what we mean when we say we're using 40 grit
and then going over it with 60 and 80
and walking up those grits in order to get a smooth finish.
We have to remove the scratches that we put in
with the previous grit, and that's just takes some time.
So let's say you wanted to go from 40 grit
and just jump up to 2000 or 1000.
If I hit this with 40 grit,
all the way to a really fine 1000.
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Did it even do anything?
I mean, look, I ran it through,
but we still have all these scratches and grooves.
If I'm gonna, this is what you're in for.
This is me most of the time, right here.
Oh sweet George Brown.
Okay, there we go.
Goodness, me.
It took me forever to get all the 40 scratches out
because I was using such a fine grit.
It's not as aggressive,
which means it takes a lot less away
every time I use that grit
and it usually doesn't even work most of the time,
you gotta step up the grits.
It really matters.
Now what you might not think about
is the fact that you're removing material
when you sand your surface, when you sand your project.
See this over here.
I had this there the whole time
and you might've been looking at it,
but this was the original starting height of the project.
We've removed all of this material in the sanding process.
That's another thing you have to keep in mind
when you're sanding, you are removing material.
If you don't have enough material to sand off,
then we need to figure out a different solution for it.
Maybe you start with a higher grit.
So it's not as aggressive and take your time.
You can see here that a lower grit
takes a lot of material away and it leaves
a lot of deep scratches and a very fine grit
all the way at the bottom like 4,000
almost looks flat when you use it.
It's not very aggressive at all.
When we walk through the grits,
we make it a lot finer as we go.
We make it a lot smoother as we go.
And you just get a better finish in your project.
Now, how do you know what your finished is going to be?
If you, let's say stop at 320,
that's gonna look different
than if you stopped at 2000.
Well, all along this whole spectrum right here,
we have different finishes.
You have a matte finish, a super matte finish at 40,
and you have a very high gloss finish at 4,000.
So what your finished result wants to be,
if you want it to be matte, you can stop in the middle.
And if you want us to be high gloss,
you can go all the way down to 4,000.
Here's what I mean.
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I've put these images on screen here,
and you can kinda see what you could expect from a finish,
a transparent clear epoxy finish,
and I put a photo behind it,
so you can actually see the difference.
As we move up to the 120,
well, it's a little bit more clear.
It's still frosted, but it's more clear.
Going to 800, it's even better.
Then when you go to 4,000 and use a polishing compound,
you get a beautiful shine, beautiful finish high gloss,
it's just a good way to go.
So that's what we have to think about when we're sanding.
We're removing material, we're stepping up the grits
all the way up to get a beautiful finish
at 4,000 with a little bit of our epoxy polish.
All right, I've had fun with the iPad and the TV.
If you liked it again, let me know in the comments below.
I wanna know if this is a cool format
that you kinda dig.
If so, I'll keep doing it,
but let's do some real life demos.
And I'll talk you through a few things
just to make sure you're fully equipped.
How do you know where to start?
Well, the main thing to keep in mind here
is the type of sanding that you're doing.
If you're doing power sanding,
it means you're gonna be removing
a good amount of material.
So you don't necessarily need to start at the lowest grit.
You just need to choose the grit that's gonna remove
all the imperfections.
And then there's hand sanding, right?
You have a piece of sandpaper
and you're just scuffing up your project simply and easily.
Why you choose which one is a really important thing.
If you're doing small projects that need a lot of fidelity,
well, hand sanding kinda makes sense for that, right?
You're gonna need to take your time and move slow
and have a lot more control.
But if you're doing a really large surface,
well, then you probably want a power sander.
Otherwise you'll be there for
four days.
Now regardless of whether you were power sanding
or whether you were hand sanding,
you probably wanted a beautiful glossy finish.
That's where polish comes into play.
Sandpaper and all these different pads,
well, they have a very, very fine grit to them,
but not a fine of grit,
not as fine of a grit.
Yeah, that's kind of a weird thing to say,
not as fine of a grit as the polishing compounds do,
they actually have little cutting materials within them
that removes surface imperfection.
So what you could get rid of at 4,000,
you add a epoxy polish to that,
and it makes it even shinier.
All right, so you know where to start,
but where do you stop?
Well, if you're going for a very very high gloss,
high shine finish, you wanna head
all the way up to 4,000 plus.
I mean, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it.
You'll get a high gloss finish that way.
If you're looking for a more matte finish,
like I recently did on this cube lamp that I made,
you should check that video out if you haven't seen it,
I actually stopped at 120
and just got, got myself like a beautiful matte finish.
That was perfect for the application.
Where you stop on that scale
will determine how matte it is, or how glossy it is,
the lower the grit the more matte,
the higher the grit the more glossy.
So there you go.
You're set, you're ready.
You know what you're doing when it comes to sanding,
be patient with yourself
and be patient with the process too.
If you have questions,
leave them in the comments below, we're in the comments,
and we're here to help you in any way that we can.
I'll see you next time.
(Jolly upbeat music)