Official Luthiers Forum!

A quick poll --- How much time does it take you to sand the finish before buffing? Not including the time spent prepping the wood for finish; just the time sanding the finish to whatever grit you sand to prior to buffing.

4-6 hours by hand. I've recently started experimenting with using fine grit discs on my random orbit sander. That should be speeding things up a lot.

    I can expect about 4 hours of sanding and about 2-4 ours buffing and polishing

8 hours worth, I am kinda slow.

Colby, let me know how using the RO sander works, I have considered it but was afraid it would either get out of control a bit or add faint swirl lines.

Mike
White Oak, Texas

If all goes well (no orange peel, etc.) about 1-1.5 before the last two coats go on, hopefully no more than 1 hour after that, then buff. I don't sand all that much, and tend to level with as high a grit as I can get away with. Then it's abralon and polishing compounds.

    Time is irrelevant. Sand areas down to eliminate blems, by visual. I lightly wet sand until just about all the surface is dulled by the paper and go to the next grade of paper. This leaves some work for the next grade until you can tell where it's going. The key is spending the time using your eyes and hands to find the problems while there's something that can be done about it.

    Your hands can feel, more than the eye can see, from surface undulations. This is an old auto body trick.

    It visual and judgement! Some jobs require a lot of work, just, to get down to realize you may have to do it over. Others, fly!

    I know your probably asking for a ballpark figure, and you got some, but I find it's more important to consider comprehensive discernment rather than time. I think this is what you want!

I grab my foam block, paper, czech begining time and forget about it!

_________________
Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

I should note I only level sand and buff the headstock face, not the rest of the neck; that's just shellac'd or oiled, which means either leave it alone, or rub it down with 0000 steel wool. It's all in the surface prep for my necks, since I don't care for the feel of high-gloss necks.

body 2hrs by hand, 1hr or less, micromesh on ROS, 1/2 hr on the buffer.