Sanding Inside of Trays

[Philip1231]

My son was working on some trays today, and we were having a devil of a time sanding the inside profile of the cove at either end of the trays.  Any suggestion on the best way to deal with this?

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[wood-chips]

Maybe try some of these. I use them on detail and small parts work.
They are consumable so with heavy use they wear fairly quickly.
But with light pressure they hold up fairly well.
Dremel buffing wheels

[MarkSingleton]

You might try sanding sponges. Backed with a dowel of the right diameter.

[fredhargis]

Try using a scraper instead. It may require you to grind your own profile (a hacksaw blade works well) but you can buy them with various radii to fit that curve.

[Philip1231]

All good ideas. Here is where we were/are:

Dremel: Ha: we did use those exact wheels and they did a fairly good job, but due to operator error (me) went too agressive with grit and/or pressure. This approach does show promise.

Non-woven pads: We did try this and it works well along the grain, but when you get to the end where you are trying not to sand cross grain, it gets to be a pain.

Scraper: never even considered this: will definitely try this.

ALL: thanks for the suggestions. Its ironic that what started out as a simple project for my son, I was stumped on this one detail: always something new to learn!

[BrokenOlMarine]

I bought a scraper kit from woodcraft years ago, with a half dozen odd shaped scrapers in it.  My favorite was a daisy shape with each petal a different size.  I used it just yesterday on a live edge side for a project to fit down into a natural hollow and scrape the fuzz out.  Left it smooth as glass. 

[FrankAtl]

I agree to try a scraper to start then wrap sandpaper around an appropriate size dowel and sand with the grain. It's a pain to do that on a rounded profile like that but sanding across the grain won't work. Just finished this same process on a turned piece and it took a while.

[mike4244]

My son was working on some trays today, and we were having a devil of a time sanding the inside profile of the cove at either end of the trays.  Any suggestion on the best way to deal with this?


Fred Hargis has the right idea, use a scraper. You could make a holder for the same cutter used in the router. The edge of the cutter is drawn towards you. If you use a hack saw blade the raise a burr by lightly grinding the edge profile.

mike

[Philip1231]

I'm on it gents. Between learning how to sharpen DT saws and making custom profile scrapers, who knew there would be so much metal working in woodworking?

[AHill]

http://www.woodworkingtips.com/etips/etip020208ws.html