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Identifying Abrasives and Preventing Loading

5:58
12:35
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Sanding Tips | Sand Like A PRO

What happens here

To distinguish between abrasive types, cloth is typically brown and has a flexible, almost fabric-like feel. Paper tears easily, while film (like Uneeda's FilmTech) is very difficult to tear. Many film abrasives feature a 'steration' (a patterned coating or treatment) designed to reduce heat and help dust particles slide out from between the grains. Loading occurs when wood fibers or old finish material clog the spaces between the abrasive grains, preventing them from cutting effectively. This leads to heat buildup and a dull abrasive. To prevent loading, use light pressure, ensure the finish is adequately cured before sanding, and choose abrasives with anti-loading properties or coatings (like the white, creamy 'soap-like' layer on some silicon carbide, or the resin-impregnated steration on FilmTech), which helps the abrasive run cooler and prevents material from sticking.

Goal: This step provides practical methods for identifying abrasive types and thoroughly explains the phenomenon of 'loading' and strategies to prevent it.

Tools and materials

  • Cloth-backed abrasive
  • Film-backed abrasive
  • Paper-backed abrasive

What they say

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really easily and we've done that with aluminum oxide that's where econ which is our brand of paper which you know you need is the owner of echamat that's where they really have excelled because we focus on wood in fact a lot of our Metal Products to be honest with you we actually Source some of that material from other sources because our stuff's really not not made for metal so just um to get back to you know the cloth um film Tech echostorm echostorm's paper on film Tech and um these are your guys's names for your products um it's for me it's easy to identify film Tech because it's blue at the storm because it's yellow um this is the cloth you know how how does like our viewers anybody wanted to know how do I know if this is cloth or not if I bought it from a different manufacturer if I went to a a hardware store how do I know whether I'm purchasing um film paper or cloth is It's probably hard to tell um unless it gives you that information on the package now cloth you'll always know because it's always going to be kind of this brown color and it's usually not steroided whereas these products are and what a steration means like this is really easy to see because it's still a carbide you see that white creamy look to it that goes back to again to try to reduce the heat that's actually almost like the easiest way to describe it's almost like putting a layer of soap on it so so it does two things it makes the product run cooler and it also helps the fibers or anything you're sanding to slide out from in between the grains now these are different this one is a top-sided uh steration just like that one so that's a after we make the product we come back with a final application and put that on the top the thing I love about film Tech I always go back to this because the steration is even better on this because it's done on the resins so you're getting that nice coolant added to it but that'll come off the top a lot easier whereas this stays in the product all the way through the use of the grain as far as knowing the difference if I if you had no other way to do it just take it and do this that's go to tear and this one you'll know you've got paper instead of film yeah because I know I yeah that's one way I do it and um you can take and tear the paper pretty easily in the film it's very difficult to tear I mean if you really you know torque on it and you're strong enough you can tear it um it's interesting the cloth so is the cloth not terrible cloth is very…

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