Dear Sirs,
Please advise me on the following matter:
Such a simple instrument, but given the millions of collective hours
using these things, I bet some Sway brothers out there have some significant design nuances to share about these things. You know, work smarter instead of harder? If it has already been addressed please provide the link.
We beat the crap out of planers, plane shapes, concaves, rockers, densities, etc. Sanding blocks sound benign, but how many sanding strokes did you make on your last non-computer 6’8"? 500, 1000, 1500? Assuming the cleanest planer work possible, where could efficiencies be gained? Different grits, block dimensions, lighter block material like hollow titanium (ha ha!)? What is optimal? What is your process? Given 1000 revolutions, reduce the sanding block weight by 2ozs and your sanding effort is reduced by 125 lbs- and that is a crude calculation that doesn’t account for all of the complicated physics.
It seemed a simple enough task to go out in the garage and make a couple sanding blocks today until I started thinking about this stuff. I have several strips of 4" x 1/2" x 4’ oak that were previously employed as the ‘skis’ for an old Nordic Track excerciser. They are very straight and don’t require too much truing but I started to think about how heavy white oak is and how much energy it takes to move it back and forth. I intended to make a 22" deck domer (poaching Bud’s design), a 10" block for vees, and possibly one for concaves- all for polyurethane foam.
In the past I have used wood glue to adhere the sandpaper to the blocks. It works well but does not remove easily when the paper wears out. It would be nice to replace the paper instead of having to true up new wood blocks. What is a good adhesive that will allow replacing the sandpaper? Super 77?
What about grits? I was thinking of 80 for a deck domer and maybe 100 or 120 for the 10" block.
This is a seemingly simple matter, but somewhere, some place, there are
some Aipas, Arakawas, Rawsons, or the likes, that have something interesting to say
about this.