Sanding Bare Wood Cabinet Doors | Painting Cabinets

I was gonna be sanding a long wood door here something we don't run into very often but you have a different method of sanding a raw wood door that I've ever seen well not necessarily a different method but you use a different sander the five inch sander is sold at paint life Supply Co along with a three by four but I think um prior to this video you told me you would use this to sand this door yeah so Sherry would you just walk us through sanding a raw wood door and just talk about why you would use the 5 inch sander not the three by four yeah sure so with a raw wood it comes out of the white it's wide belt sanded right so as it goes through you've got this running the grain running with the sander but then this grain is running against the sander so we get what we call cross grain right we also you can see on here you got some drag marks so we need to take those out when they sell doors when the door A Door Shop either builds it or sell or they buy it out you know from a door supply company they let these guys set up when wood sits up it closes so it's not going to accept stain the way it would or paint the way it would if it was recently sanded so we need to open the wood back up and that's why we we sand it so why do I use a five inch well the five inch gives me a little bit more torque and it's also got that random pattern this guy like I told you in the previous video has a tendency to leave swirl marks because it's a direct drive I want to get that random pattern and the idea is to do as little sanding on raw wood as possible so the more you sand on raw wood the more likely you are to get swirls right so what what I would do is generally most wide belt Sanders they finishing out at about 180 or 220 right so we don't ever want to go too far back you can go 150 but I choose to go to 180 most of the time so I've got a 180 film Tech and I choose filmtech again because I like the finish of the film Tech okay right so you're not going to be using a half inch sponge open cell sponge or 10 millimeter five millimeter sponge on this no and the reason being is that when you put a sponge on raw wood it tends to polish and if you polish you're going to get pooling and you're going to get you're going to have issues with your finish okay cooling just um if you don't know what pooling is that's the you're finished and stuff you're going to be straight on a Sealcoat it's not going to be absorbing into the wood right and it's going to cool on top of the wood right okay and you'll also get like some money and good staining because it would will be polished it won't absorb the stain okay cool all right so what I want to concentrate on and we talked about going around the racetrack is on the cross grain generally and I haven't said this before but we always start on stop off [Music] foreign [Music] twice and the reason I do that is because I want to hit the rails you know the the rails at least twice but the my most of my work is going to be right here on the styles to get that cross grain out the center panel again we want to go around I use that pattern simply because I want to make sure I don't miss anything right what do you like with these drag marks right here that are still showing up what would you do to get those out you're going to have to do some more sanding okay so you would use the same thing same sand or just do a little bit more sanding um I try to when when I'm doing a demo I try not to and unfortunately we have those in place and we can work on those but I try to show you what the norm is and and doing that the other profile sand in this area is it's delicate so a conventional abrasive is going to cut down it's going to flat spot so we can't take either this guy or this guy into this area right because we're going to change that profile we're going to cause some issues you've got a ton of profile in here so so this is what another area where you got to go back and handstand um and and again I go to the echo Diamond um you've got to get you've got some pretty intricate detail in here I want to get in there and I want to just rough it up and make sure that if I've got any mail marks that I get them out right so same thing that we do all the way around and again we're just looking to make sure we get all our meal marks you're going to want to blow this out before you lay down any primer but it's most of these doors are pre-sanded on the you know they're sanded free assembly so these are this is a five piece door so this Center panel is usually saying all of this is already sanded right so all we're doing is just opening it back up with the sponge so that's something I didn't know so um they are coming pretty standard this is sanded and it's all assembled so you don't have to do a lot of sanding so the sanding is really just opening it up so um for those that um may be the first time they've heard this term open can you just explain a little bit of detail what open means what that refers to well like I said the wood when it sits for any period of time it's pores words pores so it starts to close right it's going to close up the grain is going to seal up on itself and it's not going to absorb stain like we wanted to so it doesn't take a very big sand right you don't have to go into detail you're not looking and when we talk about you know maybe some cross grain that may have already been sanded out then it's just just going around the racetrack twice so and again like I said this is going to be pre-sanded prior to assembly so you're just going to really just go over it let's get it open up let's allow that wood to be ready for stain and let it absorb it so that's a good information to know so now this thing is ready to blow off and ready to be stained and ready to go yeah I would need to hit just the edges again I didn't yeah I didn't get these just simply do your edges with your um yeah and um so you would use the echo diamonds because there are you guys sell the one inch like black sponges sponges I think sponges you're in a sponge so you wouldn't use that you would use the echo Diamond I use the economic I personally and this is a personal preference I prefer the half inch and the reason being is because it is so conformable in my hand I can do you know I do this all the time and when I when I tell people that is because I can get in there and I can use as much pressure or as little pressure as I need in my understanding too this is a rubber sponge right here this outside is rubber so if you're sanding like your Corners the edges it's not going to tear no well not tear and then you also you mentioned in the beginning um you don't like to use uh um I think it was conventional abrasives or you do use conventional abrasives on this you do you do use conventional and so and for those that um may not understand what the term conventional is so conventional abrasives are typically your film Tech and echostorm right right um and so these are not conventional prices anytime you apply like a sponge any type of sponge is not all you conventional braces are going to be belts paper discs cloth disk film disc you know sheets anything that actually has grain that stands promise right so I'm starting to really understand this stuff you know in detail now so there you have at the doors ready to blow off it's ready to do our seal coat and um ready to be finished and look like a factory finish [Music] [Applause]