Tips for Sanding Handles to a Mirror Shine?

[energyloop]

I've been going crazy attempting to sand my Ever-Ready 100T to a mirror shine.

Using 280 > 320 > 400 > 800 Wet > 1000 Wet > 1500 Wet > 2000 Wet progressive grits (washing the brush in between) still leaves with me a visibly scratched brush that Meguiar's Plast-X does nearly nothing to. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with my technique but I can't find a video that shows how one should sand handles.

Do I:

1. Alternate between N/S and E/W between each grit, and sand till I can't see the previous scratches,

2. Go in small circles like a buffing motion,

or is there some other method that I'm not aware of? Do I need 220 and 600 grit papers?

I would truly appreciate some advice from the masters in brush restoration, because here I was thinking that removing the knot and rounding the edges was the hard part- and I was dead wrong.

 

[BSAGuy]

I put a cork or some other suitable-sized plug in the knot hole and spin the handle with my hand drill, like on a lathe. Apply wet sandpaper of your choice and sand away.

 

[bberg100]

I use micro mesh. Has grits to 12000 and that's what it takes to get a wet shine on plastics. http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/14...NG-PADS.aspx?gclid=CIDn6Zb8l8sCFZeEaQodY3ABDQ

And as @BSAGuy says, ya gotta spin it to shine it. I do mine on a lathe, a drill press or hand drill can be suitable subs. You also will get much better results wet sanding.

 

[energyloop]

I put a cork or some other suitable-sized plug in the knot hole and spin the handle with my hand drill, like on a lathe. Apply wet sandpaper of your choice and sand away.

I use micro mesh. Has grits to 12000 and that's what it takes to get a wet shine on plastics. http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/14...NG-PADS.aspx?gclid=CIDn6Zb8l8sCFZeEaQodY3ABDQ

And as @BSAGuy says, ya gotta spin it to shine it. I do mine on a lathe, a drill press or hand drill can be suitable subs. You also will get much better results wet sanding.

The cork+drill thing is genius! I somehow had the impression that a little elbow grease did the trick. Can't exactly get the Micromesh set readily where I am though, so I'll have to stick with the sandpaper for now. I'll break out the power drill and get to work again, thanks!

 

[bberg100]

Something else I use quite a bit, more for wood than plastic, but works OK on plastics is Scotch Brite pads. Most grocery stores have them. The green pads do great to final sand and polish wood, the white pads do a decent job on plastics. A little plastic polish, while still spinning it on your drill should finish it off nicely.

 

[energyloop]

Something else I use quite a bit, more for wood than plastic, but works OK on plastics is Scotch Brite pads. Most grocery stores have them. The green pads do great to final sand and polish wood, the white pads do a decent job on plastics. A little plastic polish, while still spinning it on your drill should finish it off nicely.

That sounds great! I'll keep an eye out for those when I head down to the hardware store.

 

[spoken36]

Spinning an object to get polish is great. It's not magic, though, so it might be useful to understand why it works so well. It comes down to pressure. There is a honing analog at work here that was illustrated by someone here with a piece of chalk on sidewalk concrete. The ground end of a piece of chalk was very ragged with a lot of pressure, and very smooth with light pressure. Same happens with razor bevels and edges, wood, plastic, and everything in between.

When we hold a given grit of paper against a moving or spinning object, the pressure isn't only distributed over the area of contact, but it is distributed over time which increases the effective area of contact. This reduces the practical psi and lets your abrasive act as though it is a much higher grit.

When hand rubbing, we are constantly grinding to a halt, accelerating and decelerating, at the end of each stroke. This exacerbates the psi situation of a slower movement in the first place.

So knowing this, we need to progress to relatively higher grits, and vary our hand pressure going from light to lighter, if we want polish and can't spin our work-piece.

That's my hyper-inflated two cents. The concepts have proven to be functional.

 

[energyloop]

Spinning an object to get polish is great. It's not magic, though, so it might be useful to understand why it works so well. It comes down to pressure. There is a honing analog at work here that was illustrated by someone here with a piece of chalk on sidewalk concrete. The ground end of a piece of chalk was very ragged with a lot of pressure, and very smooth with light pressure. Same happens with razor bevels and edges, wood, plastic, and everything in between.

When we hold a given grit of paper against a moving or spinning object, the pressure isn't only distributed over the area of contact, but it is distributed over time which increases the effective area of contact. This reduces the practical psi and lets your abrasive act as though it is a much higher grit.

When hand rubbing, we are constantly grinding to a halt, accelerating and decelerating, at the end of each stroke. This exacerbates the psi situation of a slower movement in the first place.

So knowing this, we need to progress to relatively higher grits, and vary our hand pressure going from light to lighter, if we want polish and can't spin our work-piece.

That's my hyper-inflated two cents. The concepts have proven to be functional.

That makes perfect sense, and pretty much explains how I ended up in this situation by going to town on the handle while screaming: "CAN YOU JUST SHINE ALREADY?!"

On a serious note, I hope this thread serves as a better source of information for potential handle-shiners. I've learned more about polishing from three posts than scouring the forums for "Brush Restoration".

 

[CigarSmoka]

I wet sand up to 12,000 with the micromesh pads, you need them! After that I polish twice with Novus #2 Fine Scratch remover. If it's acrylic or wood with a CA finish then last step is using my acrylic buffing wheels with blue compound stick.

 

[azwetshaver]

I will second the emphasis of a light touch. Can you post a close pic of the handle. I'm wondering if its too late when you went to town on it with that rough sandpaper. It will be difficult to take out deep scratches.

 

[shipr]

After wet sanding all the scratches out I finish with an aluminum oxide polishing compound.
I use the cork & drill method applying the polish with a microfiber cloth.

 

[energyloop]

I will second the emphasis of a light touch. Can you post a close pic of the handle. I'm wondering if its too late when you went to town on it with that rough sandpaper. It will be difficult to take out deep scratches.

Right now it's still unfinished, I decided to go get 220 and 600 grit paper just to be safe, but the local hardware store is closed for the weekend. Here it is after 400 grit:



when finished with Flitz the brush looks like it's been used and cleaned for decades, with visible fine scratches all over. I'm guessing I need to go back to 220, or even 150 and start from scratch?

 

[azwetshaver]

Right now it's still unfinished, I decided to go get 220 and 600 grit paper just to be safe, but the local hardware store is closed for the weekend. Here it is after 400 grit:

View attachment 640903

when finished with Flitz the brush looks like it's been used and cleaned for decades, with visible fine scratches all over. I'm guessing I need to go back to 220, or even 150 and start from scratch?

By "start over" do you mean another handle? I would not go under 800. Plastic is not the same as wood. I only sand with very fine steel wool. It looks like others here use 12000 grit.

I would start with very very fine sandpaper, a bowl of water and sit down in front of the tv. Spend some time sanding with an extremely light touch.

Maybe others can chime in after they see your pic.

 

[Mudruck]

By "start over" do you mean another handle? I would not go under 800. Plastic is not the same as wood. I only sand with very fine steel wool. It looks like others here use 12000 grit.

I would start with very very fine sandpaper, a bowl of water and sit down in front of the tv. Spend some time sanding with an extremely light touch.

Maybe others can chime in after they see your pic.

I agree, I would say 800 grit max or even 1000 grit max and get comfortable somewhere with the bowl of water. You should be able to eventually work the scratches out, it may just take a bit of work to get there with the finer grits. For my restores, I use new 2000 grit wet to start and work with lighter and lighter pressure until I'm close to where I want and then I switch to some very well broken in 2000 grit wet with extremely light pressure to finish up. For polish, I picked up some Meguiars plastic polish at the local O'Rileys for a couple bucks that actually works pretty darn well.

 

[energyloop]

By "start over" do you mean another handle? I would not go under 800. Plastic is not the same as wood. I only sand with very fine steel wool. It looks like others here use 12000 grit.

I would start with very very fine sandpaper, a bowl of water and sit down in front of the tv. Spend some time sanding with an extremely light touch.

Maybe others can chime in after they see your pic.

I agree, I would say 800 grit max or even 1000 grit max and get comfortable somewhere with the bowl of water. You should be able to eventually work the scratches out, it may just take a bit of work to get there with the finer grits. For my restores, I use new 2000 grit wet to start and work with lighter and lighter pressure until I'm close to where I want and then I switch to some very well broken in 2000 grit wet with extremely light pressure to finish up. For polish, I picked up some Meguiars plastic polish at the local O'Rileys for a couple bucks that actually works pretty darn well.

I'm going to resand the entire handle while I have everything set up. I initially used 400 in an attempt to round off the corners before even polishing the rest of the brush, which kinda started the ball rolling on the scratch problem. I'm not sure if 800 can undo what I've done to the handle with the 280, but I'll give it a shot.

 

[azwetshaver]

Keep us posted

 

[energyloop]

Keep us posted

Tried it, vast increase in scratch consistency and speed using the drill- but both 800 and 400 still left minor vertical scratches from previous attempts untouched. Looks like it's back to 220 > 2000.

 

[Ric Jones]

Thanks for the tips! I’m about to start on my first restore. An ER 100T. I’m hoping to successfully remove the existing knot, polish the handle, add weight and set a 24mm knot.

 

[Graydog]

I use automotive headlight scratch remover and it works well for Me

 

[strop]

Try an automotive supply store for the higher grits of W/D paper. Micromesh is great stuff. If you can't get it, finish polishing with a plain brown paper grocery bag. I used to use it on pens. IIRC, it is about 20,000 grit? Certainly finer than any sandpaper you can find.