What Grit First Sanding Hardwood Floor

For refinishing a hardwood floor you will have to sand over that floor multiple times.

What grit first sanding hardwood floor. The rotary cut of the edger is the most aggressive cut of all the floor sanding machines. The higher the grit number is equivalent to a finer abrasive which creates smoother surface finishes. The first grit is meant to take off any finish the next is to smooth out the pattern of the first grit and the final grit is meant to smooth out any remaining sander marks and provide the. Buff the floor starting at one wall and.

As with the drum sander start with course grit paper and then move to finer grades. When it comes to sanding a hardwood floor grit sequence is everything. Remove shoe moulding the wood trim where the wall meets the floor. Sanding a wood floor is a multi step process.

You ll need to sand the entire floor not just one section. You want to start with a more abrasive grit and then use successively finer grits. Initial efforts in hardwood floor sanding. The result is a fresh new looking wood floor.

Solid hardwood boards are 3 4 inches thick and each has a groove milled in its side that overlaps the tongue of the adjacent board. Lower grit numbers represent coarser abrasives that scrape off materials much quicker. Sanding removes on average about 1 16 inch of material and sometimes. Either way the abrasive to use is 120 or 150 grit sanding screen.

Use an edger sander or small orbital sander to sand corners edges and small areas such as closet floors bathrooms or stairs. Sanding the floor will kick up a lot of dust so protect light fixtures and tape over electrical outlets. On older floors the first step when sanding is to choose an aggressive grit like 24 grit per square inch to level the boards one to another and remove imperfections if possible. Sanding a solid hardwood floor can also be risky if the floor has been sanded before.

Don t be afraid to use new belts and more than one. Knowing how to keep the scratch pattern with the grain as much as possible minimizes edger swirl marks. A typical first cut with an edger is 60 or 80 grit then completed with 100 grit after the floor has been filled. So the first step to take is to determine the sequence of the grit of the sandpaper.

Before you start sanding remove everything from the room and vacuum the floor. Bleach formulated for wood floors may be worth a try but the results are often mediocre at best and at worst the wood is left pitted and blotched. Like the one used for sanding drywall. The grit of sandpapers is a rating of the size of abrasive materials on the sandpaper.

An edger can be difficult to control so practice your technique on scrap wood first. The groove overlap is typically about 1 4 inch thick. More facts on. We call this process rough cutting.