Grit sizes explainedĬoated abrasives like sanding belts, sanding discs, sanding rolls, and sanding sheets have a range of grain sizes. Any deviations can compromise the quality of the finished workpiece, so the team at Red Label Abrasives has put together this sanding grit guide to support the success of your sanding efforts. You want to start with a rougher abrasive that eliminates all stock and finish, followed by successively finer grits that clear away sanding marks until a smooth finish results. What does a good grit sequence look like?ĭuring a sanding project, choosing the right grit sequence is critical.You’ll then want to use medium grits (P100 - P220) for prepping and shaping materials followed by fine grits (P240+) for sharpening and polishing.
#Sandpaper grit chart pdf#
I’ll be adding to this chart as I get more statistics, but this chart is a good first stab.īelow you can download an Excel spreadsheet (and modify it if you please) and a pdf of the chart for those readers who aren’t chartered accountants.Generally speaking, you’ll want to use coarse grits (P8 - P80) for stock removal and the stripping of paints and varnishes. Please keep in mind that these are published statistics I have no way (or desire) to measure the actual particle size or consistency of the media. – Other stuff (diamond paste, green compound, ceramic diamond media) – Man-made stones (silicon carbide and aluminum oxide) So with the help of readers and published statistics, I’ve put together a spreadsheet of common sharpening media and converted them to microns for you. So the smaller the number in microns, the finer the grit. One micron is one-millionth of a meter (hey, I just used the metric system). A micron is a measurement of the diameter of each particle of grit in your stone and paper. Now I don’t want to bore you with a discussion of microns, but here’s the short explanation. The good news is that you can convert all sharpening media to microns and get a better picture of where your sharpening stone or paper is in the continuum from cinderblock (coarse) up to baby’s behind (very fine). Your edge won’t improve when you move to the extra-fine stone. Well good luck, both of these stones are the same grit (22 micron). Here’s an example: Say you want to use a soft Arkansas oilstone as your coarse stone and an extra-fine India (aluminum oxide) stone to finish things up. Just start with the coarse media and proceed to the fine one.īut if you start mixing brands or systems, you can get in trouble. If you stick with one system and one brand (say, you use Norton waterstones exclusively), this isn’t a problem. The reason is that sandpaper, waterstones, oilstones, diamond stones and silicon carbide stones all use different systems to tell you how coarse or how fine the material is.
(Heck, #1,000-grit sandpaper in the United States isn’t the same as #1,000-grit sandpaper in Europe.) A #1,000-grit waterstone isn’t the same grit as #1,000-grit sandpaper. Your edges get keener but you get more confused about the “grits” used in the process. Once you get serious about sharpening, two things happen.