Sanding - The Woodturner's Friend and Enemy

Once a piece of wood has made it around and around the lathe, it is time to sand it before the finish goes on. Sanding is one of those things that wood turners assume someone must like to do, but not them. Still it is something that we all go through so it should be made as safe as possible.

The dust that a lathe can kick up is incredible, especially with dry, spalted wood. While turning mostly shavings are made and these are too large to be a problem for a person's lungs. Their weight quickly takes them to the floor and their size prevents them being a breathing problem anyway. Sanding dust, on the other hand, can be extremely small in size, especially as higher grits are used.

This dust may stay in the air for a long time and is easily breathed into the lungs. While allergies can certainly be a problem, for most the difficulty is the layering of the dust on the surface of the lungs causing long term breathing problems. The solutions are threefold.

First of all we start at the source, the wood. Make the need for sanding as limited as possible by getting the best surface from the tool. A final sharpening before the final cut will help as will making that cut gentle and fairly slow so as to reduce tearing of the wood.

In the lower grits especially some wood turners like to use paste wax on the wood or the paper so as to catch a lot of the dust. This needs to be avoided in the higher grits as left over wax may interfere with the final finish.

Second there is the opportunity to remove the dust from the shop before it gets to the lungs. Dust collectors are designed to extract down to incredibly tiny particles. They may be ceiling mounted or floor models. Many if not most have a noise problem but hearing protection is easy to use.

Third is the use of a sanding mask. While there are many on the market, it is best to have one with a rating of N95. This means it has an efficiency rating of 95% for particles 0.3 microns and larger and is not resistant to oil (the N). As far as woodturners are concerned, this will take care of the breathing dust problem. Clean up is another matter

Remember that you have only one set of lungs and safety is an individual concern. Turning wood is more fun the longer you can breathe.