When finishing a stock, what grit do you typically stop at before applying the first coats of finish? 400?

320 Garnet paper, but very thoroughly with each grit from 100, or 120 onward whiskering between each grit. I leave NO scratches behind.

quote:

Originally posted by SDH:
320 Garnet paper, but very thoroughly with each grit from 100, or 120 onward whiskering between each grit. I leave NO scratches behind.

And this is the important thing. When you are done with the 100, there should be NO file marks. When you are done with the 120, there should be NO scratches left from the 100. If you start with the 150 and see scratches from the 100, go back to 120 and get rid of them. If you jump to too fine a grit, it is too difficult to eliminate coarse scratches. The denser the wood, the more important it is to progress in sequence and be thorough. The scratches show up more. Regards, Bill.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Leeper:

quote:

Originally posted by SDH:
320 Garnet paper, but very thoroughly with each grit from 100, or 120 onward whiskering between each grit. I leave NO scratches behind.

And this is the important thing. When you are done with the 100, there should be NO file marks. When you are done with the 120, there should be NO scratches left from the 100. If you start with the 150 and see scratches from the 100, go back to 120 and get rid of them. If you jump to too fine a grit, it is too difficult to eliminate coarse scratches. The denser the wood, the more important it is to progress in sequence and be thorough. The scratches show up more. Regards, Bill.

Exactly~~

I start wet sanding with 220 grt. and I do not raise the grain, I use that mud to fill the pores up to 400 for a satin finish and 600 to 800 on a gloss finish, a lot depends on the wood, on Claro or Black walnut I would normally go up to 320 to begin wet sanding..actually I playwitht he wood to make that determination, at any rate you can always back off and start all over if your wrong, it no big deal..I normally work with Turkish or Russian walnut (same think almost) the geographical difference is an imaginary line, but the Russian I was getting was darker and I liked that..

I always scrape the stock in to illimenate file marks etc, then sand with whatever rough the stock takes too...let the wood do the talking, its never the same from stick to stick.

Wet sand with what ?

After I get to 320 grit I rub one or two coats of Tung oil into the stock to start with, let dry for two days between coats. Then I wet sand in several more coats depending on how it is developing. ( Like Ray said above.) It think that I wet sand with 400-600 grit.

Here is a procedure that I use now and it really works.
I bought a special 1/2 inch soft rubber pad for my little orbital palm sander. With this soft pad I can wet power sand right over the convex areas like the comb.
Slop on lots of oil on the stock and splash lots on the fine sandpaper on the soft pad. Run the orbital sander at the slowest setting, keep it moving with the lightest presser possible. It quickly turns the the wood dust into mud and drives it into the wood. It is impressive how it works. I can wet sand a whole butt stock in 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Let stand for a few minutes and wipe off the excess with a dry cloth. Repeat process a couple of times. Brian

quote:

Originally posted by rcraig:
Wet sand with what ?

Use the finish as a wetting agent, I thin it a bit