Tool Tip: How to Add Sandpaper to the Sanding Stick

Here’s a great mini-tutorial from Elaine Luther of Creative Texture Tools (BTW, Elaine’s site is a fabulous resource for anyone interested in PMC and metal clay – be sure to visit).

Items needed:

sanding stick
black wet/dry sandpaper
a scoring tool
scissors

Buy sandpaper from the hardware store. You want the black wet/dry paper, this is for metal. The tan is for wood. Hardware stores carry up to 600 grit, which is the finest they carry. If you want even finer than that, some auto supply stores carry 1500 grit.

Lay the sandpaper down in front of you on the table, landscape position. Now place your sanding stick on the left edge, placing the handle end closest to you. When you wrap the sanding stick with new sandpaper, you want the handle to be exposed, so it may be necessary to trim down the sandpaper. Cut it to about the length of the brown sandpaper that comes already on the sanding stick. You can use scissors or an Exacto knife.

Now you’re ready to wrap. Again, lay the sandpaper down in front of you on the table, landscape position. Now place your sanding stick on the left edge, placing the handle end closest to you.

Holding the sanding stick down with one hand, drag a scoring tool down the right edge of the sanding tool. What’s a scoring tool? Anything you have that’s not too sharp. You dont want to cut all the way through the sand paper, you just want to score a line so youll get a sharp edge when you fold it. An end of a metal file, a burnisher maybe, a kitchen tool, whatever you have on hand.

Score a line, and holding the sandpaper onto the stick with your fingers, move the sanding stick so that it is resting on its skinny side now. Score another line, and lay the sanding stick down on its other wide side. Repeat on the next skinny side. Now you should have the whole thing wrapped with one layer of sandpaper!

Repeat until you run out of sandpaper. Secure the ends. The traditional metalsmithing way is to wrap the ends (top and bottom of the sandpaper) with wire. Practically though, this can get in the way. An easy method is to open a stapler and staple the ends down, top and bottom, front and back. Youve really got to wack the stapler. Masking tape will also do the job, but stapling is ideal.

As the sandpaper gets worn out, just rip it off on that side of the sanding stick and throw away the piece of sandpaper. It should rip off cleanly because of those handy scoring marks you made.

Thanks so much for sending in this useful tip, Elaine!