Safety Rules
Don't wear loose clothing or gloves, keep long hair tied back. • Never adjust Sander or setup while Sander is running. • Never remove guard unless authorized by Technician or WRL Manager • Setups requiring anything other than the standard sander equipment must be approved by supervisor.
POTENTIAL HAZARDS AND INJURIES
Eye injuries. Excessive dust. Unsecured material being flung around.
The Golden Rule of Sanding
The golden rule for choosing your sequence is to never skip more than 1 grit. For example, if you start with P80, and need to finish at P240, rather than using every grit from P80 – P220, you can do P80 – P120 – P180 – P240.
Over time, breathing the dust from drywall joint compounds may cause persistent throat and airway irritation, coughing, phlegm production, and breathing difficulties similar to asthma. Smokers or workers with sinus or respiratory conditions may risk even worse health problems.
Safety Rules
Don't wear loose clothing or gloves, keep long hair tied back. Never remove guards unless authorized by WRL Manager. Don't place hands or fingers under pieces during feeding to avoid potential pinch hazard. Don't let hands come too close to top of opening on sander.
Most woodworking accidents occur on 3 machines: surface planers, circular saw benches and vertical spindle moulders. If the machines are not guarded properly you may contact the dangerous parts and suffer a severe injury, sometimes loosing fingers or upper limbs.
The starting sandpaper grit depends on the type of wood, project, and finish. You do not need to always start with the coarse grit. If the wood has a lot of uneven areas and dents, like with an off-the-shelf 2×4, start with coarse sandpaper like 60-grit.
Sanding techniques
STOP OFF. Dull grains can also cause swirl marks, resulting from using incorrect sanding abrasives, as well as improper sanding techniques, such as applying too much pressure or moving the sander too fast across the surface.
It's okay to sand inside given you wear a respirator and have a variety of dust collection mechanisms in place. Connecting a shop vacuum to your sander, sanding on a downdraft table, wet sanding instead of dry sanding, and sealing the room you're working in all reduce the amount of free-flowing sawdust.
If you sand wood past 240 grit sandpaper, the wood dust becomes so fine that it starts clogging the pores of the wood. This prevents stain and finish from soaking into the wood properly, risking a poor finish job. Alternatively, if you sand too much in one single spot, you might create a divot in the wood.
If wood gets over-sanded in one spot, it starts to become uneven, with a distorted sort of appearance. This can happen to even the most experienced woodworker. Usually this starts simply by attempting to sand out a discoloration, defect, scratch or gouge.
AVOID kickback by sanding in accordance with directional arrows. Sand on downward side of disc. Sanding on the upward side could cause the workpiece to fly up causing injury. ALWAYS maintain a maximum clearance of 1/16" or less between the table or backstop and the sanding belt or disc.
Move the sander back and forth in smooth even strokes along the direction of the wood grain. Keep the sander moving at all times to avoid sanding uneven spots in the wood.
ALWAYS sand on the downward side of the disc (Left side) when using the disc portion of the machine. Sanding on the upward side of the disc could cause the work piece to fly up which could be dangerous.
Drink Green Tea
Cleaning your lungs may be as simple as sipping hot tea—green tea, specifically. Green tea is packed with inflammation-reducing antioxidants, and some research suggests that it may help protect lung tissue from the harmful impacts of smoke inhalation.
Wood processing causes small particles of wood dust to become airborne. Workers can inhale these particles. A person's upper respiratory system can filter out the larger particles, but smaller particles can go deep into the lungs causing damage and scarring to the lung tissue.
Lungs are self-cleaning organs that will begin to heal themselves once they are no longer exposed to pollutants. The best way to ensure your lungs are healthy is by avoiding harmful toxins like cigarette smoke and air pollution, as well as getting regular exercise and eating well.
Sandpaper comes in various grits, based on the number of sand particles per square inch. Take the guesswork out of choosing grit size by following this general rule of thumb: a low number = coarse paper and a high number = fine paper. Always start with the smallest number and work your way up for the best results.
Wet and dry sanding accomplish the same goal of removing material to produce a smoother surface. However, wet sanding takes a lot longer and produces a surface even smoother than the one achieved by dry sanding. There are further variations. Water is used in wet sanding but not in dry sanding.