sander to work with Cherry

[asmirnov]

Hello experts,

Shopping for the sander to work on couple of my home projects with Pennsylvania Cherry.

Need your advise on what sander will be best. I was thinking about RO 90 but having read some posts here now I am not so sure. This is really my first exposure to cherry and I am not sure even with the sand paper - should i start with 200 and go up to 600 grit may be? And speaing about the sander my concern is - how do I go along the grain with orbital movement, is that at all possible using power sander? Or is there a sander that doesn't do orbital or does orbital in one mode and linear in another mode for example?
Thank you for the feeback.

Anatoliy

 

[Sparktrician]

I've successfully sanded a fair amount of cherry using my RO125 with Brilliant2 in grits from P80 through P400.  The more coarse grits precluded the need to use a surface planer. 

[smile]

 

[mouppe]

Hi Anatoly,

I hope this is not patronizing you, but I will try to explain a sanding process from the basics. Forget any grain issues, as was written in your other post. This is sanding, not planing.

You want to sand with higher and higher grit sandpaper until the wood- cherry in this case- is ready for a finish. A finish could be shellac, a poly, a lacquer, etc. But let's leave that for a moment.

If the cherry surface is rough, you will want to start at a much lower grit than 200, e.g. 80 or 100. Sand until it is as smooth as you can get it with this grit paper, then move to 120 or 150. Repeat the sanding. Then move to 180. At this point, you can switch to a random orbit sander and 220 grit paper.

After 220 sanding, the surface should be really smooth. When you wipe you hand across the cherry it may pick up a very fine dust. Cherry is a closed-grain wood, so the dust will sit on the surface. Wipe it off with a tack cloth.

You do not need to go higher than 220 grit paper before you apply a finish.

I would use a shellac finish on cherry, but that's another story.

The Rotex sanders will be perfect for your needs as they have a gear-driven mode (for low grits to about 150), and a random orbit mode (for 180+).

Hope this helps.

 

[asmirnov]

I've successfully sanded a fair amount of cherry using my RO125 with Brilliant2 in grits from P80 through P400.  The more coarse grits precluded the need to use a surface planer. 

[smile]

Bill,

Thank you for the response. Let me ask you please - the RO125 that you mentioned - did you use random orbit mode on that?

Thanks

Anatoliy

 

[asmirnov]

Hi Anatoly,

I hope this is not patronizing you, but I will try to explain a sanding process from the basics. Forget any grain issues, as was written in your other post. This is sanding, not planing.

You want to sand with higher and higher grit sandpaper until the wood- cherry in this case- is ready for a finish. A finish could be shellac, a poly, a lacquer, etc. But let's leave that for a moment.

If the cherry surface is rough, you will want to start at a much lower grit than 200, e.g. 80 or 100. Sand until it is as smooth as you can get it with this grit paper, then move to 120 or 150. Repeat the sanding. Then move to 180. At this point, you can switch to a random orbit sander and 220 grit paper.

After 220 sanding, the surface should be really smooth. When you wipe you hand across the cherry it may pick up a very fine dust. Cherry is a closed-grain wood, so the dust will sit on the surface. Wipe it off with a tack cloth.

You do not need to go higher than 220 grit paper before you apply a finish.

I would use a shellac finish on cherry, but that's another story.

The Rotex sanders will be perfect for your needs as they have a gear-driven mode (for low grits to about 150), and a random orbit mode (for 180+).

Hope this helps.

Leon,

Thank you very much for the detailed response. this helps a lot. So I guess like you guys are saying I should be fine. The reason I was asking this question - what I realized with whatever my humble experience goes - if you go along the wood grain while sanding (manually) it looks much better as opposed to when you go across the grain. So I was just curious about the orbital mode which will go across whatever you do and "across" movements will be seen. But as you said I guess the random orbit mode should help.

By the way - the guy that I was buying cherry from told me to use boiled leenseed oil for the finish, nothing else. I didn't see many folks mentioned this though while reading the forum. Could you comment on this please?

Best Regards

Anatoliy

 

[Sparktrician]

I've successfully sanded a fair amount of cherry using my RO125 with Brilliant2 in grits from P80 through P400.  The more coarse grits precluded the need to use a surface planer. 

[smile]

Bill,

Thank you for the response. Let me ask you please - the RO125 that you mentioned - did you use random orbit mode on that?

Thanks

Anatoliy

I used both random orbit as well as Rotex mode.  Rotex mode is great for both heavy work with the more coarse grits as well as fine finishing with the finer grits.  Random orbit with the finer grits is also very good at fine finishing.  I'd suggest that you buy and try on a spare piece of the cherry that you intend to use, just to see what results you get with which mode and which grit.  Good luck! 

One more thing - you might like to try a tung oil finish.  Again, give it a try and see if you like it.  I've used tung oil on several things, first starting with my shotgun stocks many years ago, and it makes the wood look wonderful plus it gives good weather resistance. 

[smile]

 

[mouppe]

Anatoly,

The question of which finish to use is very hard to answer in brief.

First, we need to know what you are making, what degree of abuse it will suffer, will it come into contact with water, food, alcohol, sunlight, heat and so on. This will affect the finish you choose.

Boiled Linseed Oil, or BLO as it is more commonly referred to, is a very popular finish. It is easy to apply, easy to maintain and looks great. BUT...

...it is not not durable at all and scratches easily. It provides no barrier to water.

Second, cherry is a "blotchy" wood. This means that certain areas of the wood will soak up more of the finish than others, leading to a potentially blotchy finish. The easiest way to get round this is to seal the wood before applying a finish. I use shellac for this. Very simple. You apply a light coat with a rag or brush, and let it dry.

Then you apply the finish, whatever you choose. You could for BLO at this point if you wish. Or you could just go for a poly finish or more layers of shellac. The photo below is of a cherry top with a shellac finish.

Hope this helps.
Richard.

[attachthumb=#]

 

[asmirnov]

Richard,

It's very good to know that
I am building a piano (or rather a looking like piano box) for the digital stage piano that I purchased recently. I will put out a picture on Friday, I am out of town currently, since it is almost ready to start assembly, and before that I wanted to sand some parts. The next one will be a book case, so all is for internal use.

 

[asmirnov]

Here is my baby I am working on right now - the piano box for our Roland GX700 full key board piano - not ready yet - the front vertical board is not ready yet, have to do some routing there, the front facing verticals will have some covers to cover the joints which can be seen currently, I was thinking about walnut lays but then thought would be too dark, may be will go with cherry as well. Have not decided yet how to play around the sides on the upper back endings to go well with the routing on the upper deck sides.