Door Project Day 3

Two good friends came up to visit yesterday, one of whom really knows wood. He told me to stop spazzing about using a circular electric sander because I'll be working my way up the sandpaper gradients anyway, so I'll be hand-sanding everything after the initial varnish/stain removal stage is over (in other words, there won't be any circular marks in the wood if I do my job right).

That made good sense to me, so today I cranked up the electric sander and made light work of something that had previously been arm-paralyzing work.

Remember my somewhat frustrating attempts with chemical remover? I only used it on that one part. About 45 minutes to an hour of messing with chemical remover yielded okay results. About 5 minutes with the electric sander yielded this:

Before

After


Yeah, that's the same end piece.

So I used the electric sander mostly just on the ends, since most of the major sanding work is done.



All the heavy areas of varnish/stain are off the door. All that's left are some odd grayish/bluish areas, which seem to be areas where I just need to hand sand a little harder. In the next week I'll be carefully sanding these spots off so that I'm just left with fresh, blonde wood. Then I can finally start moving up the sand paper gradients and getting a beautifully smooth finish.



Sanding is definitely the most difficult and time-consuming part, but I know it's also the part that will make all the difference. If I don't do a thorough, meticulous job sanding, then no matter what stain color I use it's just not going to look good... at all! So I'm putting in some serious time now, but I know the rest will go much easier, smoother and faster.