I’m yet to meet a woodworker who hasn’t moaned about sanding their work at some point, and I get it! You do all this fun woodwork and then at the very end you now have to spend all this time slowly and meticulously rubbing it down with little pieces of paper or heavy equipment until it’s perfectly smooth. I’ll even be the first to admit that for a long time I left things badly sanded or under-sanded because I was sick of it! But sanding serves a very important reason, and getting it right can mean the difference between a beautifully finished piece and something of lower quality or value.

Below we’ve put a few tips and tricks for getting your head around sanding your work, but if you’re more of a hands on learner read on to the end to find out which of our courses go deep in on sanding so you can learn by doing!

Understanding your grits

One of the main questions we get around sanding is from people wanting to understand what sandpaper grits mean, and which grits they should be sanding with. Luckily, once you’ve got your head around a couple of key things, sanding can be simple and even enjoyable! The information below applies whether you are using machinery to sand or doing it by hand.

Start with your lowest grit first (eg. the lowest number) – what grit this is will depend on your piece, including the species of wood and what tools you’ve used to work on it, however all we are aiming for is the highest grit that will remove all the marks you want to remove.
- Eg. If you want to sand a surface that’s straight off of a hand saw, you might need something like 40 grit to get rid of those deep tooth marks. You could try to sand it with 100 grit, and it will eventually remove them, but not before eating through a roll of paper and a lot of your own good will!
- Sanding should be easy! If you feel like you are on struggle street trying to sand your surface smooth, move to a coarser grit.
Once you have a smooth surface (ie. all the surface is flat and even, not necessarily a smooth-feeling surface finish), move up to the next sanding grit.
- All this grit is doing now is removing the scratches the previous grit made. You are not using this grit to flatten or smooth the surface any more than removing the sanding marks.
- You will now be left with slightly smaller sanding marks
Move up another grit, and repeat until the sanding marks are small enough that you either can’t see them or are happy with them remaining on your work. For most purposes, we find 240-320 grit leaves a good surface finish, but for fine work you may want to continue to 600-800 grit.
Remember: only your first grit of sandpaper is smoothing the surface, everything else is just removing the marks you’ve been making.
If you already have a very good finish on your piece (eg. it’s come straight off of a sharp router or a hand plane), start with a higher grit! A fresh sharp plane can even produce a finish that doesn’t need to be sanded.

Effective sanding practice

Not all sanding techniques are equal in effectiveness or outcome! A few things to keep in mind or try include:

Where possible, sanding along the length of the grain will produce finer results than sanding across the grain. Sanding is all about creating and then removing small scratches in the surface, and timber grain can hide those scratches very effectively when they’re parallel to it.
If not possible to sand with the grain (ie. in tight corners, with swirly or strange grain, or on a lathe), sand with a gentle touch and be careful of leaving scratches that are so deep you’ll change the shape of your work.
When sanding by hand, wrap your sandpaper around a backing block to even out the pressure and avoid rounding over any corners or edges. We like firm foam blocks for rounded shapes and cork or softwood blocks for flat edges and faces.
When machine sanding, always use a vacuum or other form of dust extraction and a face mask – wood dust can be dangerous to your lungs and sanding produces a lot of it very quickly!
Sanding faster isn’t always better! Machine sanding at low speeds can produce much better results and leave sanding pads lasting longer than high speed sanding which produces more heat.
If your current grit of sandpaper isn’t removing the marks you’re trying to remove, go down grits until it does, then work your way back up. Working on one spot with a high grit is a good way of creating small bumps and divots in your surface!
Be careful of splinters while sanding, especially along edges and corners and while doing your initial low-grit sand. We often wear gloves for hand sanding, or keep our hands away from the timber’s surface with a block or other sanding tool.

Don’t make sanding any harder than it needs to be

The biggest mistake you can make is needing to sand something twice! Wood can be fragile, especially well-sanded surfaces, as the cohesive finish will show marks, divots, stains, and other unsightly elements far more than an un-sanded surface will.

When sanding your work, think through your entire order of operations before starting, such as:

When sanding your work, how are you going to brace or support it while doing so? For example, this might look like sanding the underside or back first, so even if it gets slightly marked while sanding the most visible surface, it will be less noticeable on the finished piece.
Do you have supplies on hand to help protect sanded surfaces? This may be rags, towels, foam, or just a clean and smooth work surface. If you’re like us and your benches are full of marks and wear from regular use, putting something on top of them can make a huge difference!
Once your piece is sanded, how are you going to store it so it doesn’t get damaged before or after finishing?

Thinking through a few questions up front can save you a world of pain later on!

Learning more about sanding and finishing

If you’re interested to get some more hands on experience with sanding and finishing, check out our wide range of courses. Our introduction to finishing course is the perfect place to learn about sanding, surface preparation, and how they impact the final finish of your work, but we also dive into sanding in our Adirondack Chair course, our woodwork fundamentals and intro to woodwork courses, and many more of our woodwork-related courses.

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