Sanding Fine Details

Well, as the expression says, the devil is in the details, and a carving like this, coming back and cleaning up all of that carving can be a difficult thing to do because you've got all these little nooks and crannies that you wanna get your sander into. It would be especially great if we could hit this stuff with a random orbit sander, because random orbit sanders work quickly, but provide a great surface finish. So, what you need to do in applications like this, is look for the right tool for the job. And there are carving specific tools out there, like this one, that attach to the angle grinder, is gonna do a really nice job of allowing you to get in here, to clean this up, and with the help of self-adhesive sandpaper, progress up your grits, like you would do with other woodworking projects. So, let me do a little more sanding on this, in order to finish cleaning up this eagle, and then we're gonna move onto something else. I'll show you another great application for tools like this. What's nice is it's taken that material off quickly, but not difficult to control. All right, that's all the sanding I'm gonna do for now, on Mr. Eagle, but now I'm gonna show you something else that's a great application of these little sanders. Now, in addition to carving, bowl turning is another spot that's just historically difficult to sand, especially bowl interiors. Bowl exteriors, fairly easy to get at, but inside the bowl, anything I can do to make that go easier and faster, I'm gonna go after. So, I'm gonna power this lathe back up, power my sander back up, and you can see how that sander's gonna help me clean up the inside of the bowl here. This is a beautiful chunk of elm, I've got some more sanding to do to get the rest of my tool marks out. But really the lesson out of this whole thing is that working on carvings, working on bowl turnings, you're gonna make your life a lot easier, you're gonna end up with a better finished project, by making sure you got the right tool for the job, so that you can get into those nooks and crannies and do all the sanding that you need to do, to get your tool marks off, clean that up, remember, devil's in the details, make sure that the details look great.