Burning wood when sanding,,,,

G

Grouser1741

Joined
Apr 17, 2018
Messages
319
Hello everyone,,
What do you do to remove exotic wood when sanding it produces only burned wood.
Purple heart is what I'm working on now.
Thanks
 
The one I'm most familiar to is hard maple . Industrially the problem can easily start fires! However there are abrasives that cover less than 100%, such as 80% or 60% .Search for those and add that to Jorad's comments.
 
Yes fresh new belts or slow grinder speed down.File to remove heavy stock and hand sanding.
 
too much speed, too dull of a belt, or too much time/pressure. if you only have dull belts light pressure and quick time against the belt will prevent it. micarta burns also, i use my belts on handle material before i use them on metal.
 
maple is a hard very hard wood and I've had this issue, using 80-120 grit on the grinder is okay if you do light quick passes, but to remove material in bulk its difficult to not burn. So patience and possibly hand tools, especially for finishing.
 
Use fresh AO wood sanding belts.
Slow the belt speed a lot.
Clean belt regularly.
Let the wood cool 30 seconds every minute.
Hand sand the butt to finish.
 
for wood on a belt sander, I only use 36 or 40 grit for most of the removal and shaping.
anything finer than that just clogs IMO,
then a hand stitched wood rasp file as required
 
Use an appropriate grit (80 or lower for removal), a fresh belt, a belt eraser (very important with oily exotics), and a slower speed. When sanding with or cross the grain, you shouldn't really have problems unless you are using way too much pressure or sanding an area for way too long. Sanding end grain is generally where you run into issues.

If you find the wood burning, either take more frequent breaks or swap to a new or coarser belt.
 
I have been using a Shinto rasp recently for my heavy wood removal, then going to the grinder (about 60 grit) as an intermediate step before going to hand sanding. It has turned out to be the best combination of time and cost for me.
 
I buy Zirc belts that I only use for rough grinding handle material. Brand new ones work well on really hard or easily burned exotics like ironwood and snakewood. When they lose their initial sharpness, they still work great on maple and walnut and micarta. When they lose that bit of sharpness, they're still good enough for deburring chopsaw cuts, which kills them pretty quickly.

But one 36 grit Zirc belt will rough out a LOT of handles before getting dull enough to burn easily. And I rarely bother to cut any kind of profile with a band saw. Just start from block or scale rectangle.
 
I like microplane's system for shaping. I don't use it on ironwood or similar, because replacements are more expensive than a new belt. It works on everything else very well.
 
If you want to go full on knuckle-dragger, you could try spokeshaves and small planes. A low angle spokeshave can hog off material very quickly, followed by a high angle spokeshave or small (violin maker's) plane for clean-up shaping, followed by sandpaper/steel wool for final polish.

Examples:
Low Angle: http://www.leevalley.com/us/Wood/page.aspx?p=44834&cat=1,50230&ap=1
High Angle: http://www.leevalley.com/us/Wood/page.aspx?p=49142&cat=1,50230&ap=1 or https://www.lie-nielsen.com/product/spokeshaves/1-sp-boggs-c-boggs-spokeshaves?node=4091
Violin Makers Plane: https://www.lie-nielsen.com/product/block-planes/violin-makers-plane?node=4072

I switch between all three when working with wooden scales.

Mike
 
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