Tips and Tricks, Sanding pads

3/15/2009

As I was getting ready today to start working, (sanding, glueing) on my Pelicans, (the previous post) I realized since it had been such a long time since I had REALLY been in my shop that my little sanding pads were really dirty. Not only from shop dirt but just good old fashioned dust and what we call in my town, Westwood red dirt. I remembered a trick I was told a couple years ago by an old guy (woodworking artist) from Laguna Beach Ca. had told me. I have done this before, more than a couple times so I will vouche for it. Wash them! Yup, right in your washing machine. Take the pads, place them in a pillow case and tie a knot in the end of the case and proceed to wash. Use cold water and of course a gentle cycle, (you don't want to tear off all the sand of the sanding pad) and don't crowd them, (something I did a little too much with this wash job. They come out clean and like new, (well almost) but I swear they keep a longer life doing this.


I take them out of the washer and place them on a clothes dryer rack (the kind that is a bunch of dowels) and place them by the wood stove. They are dry in no time at all.



A lot of you may be saying to yourselves, "well they are sooo inexpensive to begin with why bother?" I suspect a lot of my  readers do not have to bother, but where I live, I have to order them from like Harbor Frieght in Reno Nevada, and because they are so inexpensive it would be very easy to pay say $5.00 for the product and another $15.00 to ship it.
So the moral to my little story is this, When you do not want to wipe the beak of your pelican that just so happens to be a white beak with a sanding pad that looks as if you used it to sand aromatic cedar on your last project, it is safe to throw them in the washing machine, AND it works!
PEACE!!!
Allison