[vgod]

okay, so i worked on getting my sanding drums more refined. last night i used a hanger tube. i discoverd tonight that the diameter is just to small. so i ran to home depot for a wood dowel. cut to about 10 inches, and sanded to 320 grit to smooth down and be easier to pull off the tubes.

the 1st 3 attempts at making drums taught me a couple of things. overlap your tape that you are wrapping around the dowel maybe 1/8 inch or more. this is your foundation. i was not overlapping but maybe a millimeter or so. what happens is that the seam becomes a weak point and the drum breaks apart. toxik then states that he overlapped the sandpaper just a small bit. this was not working for me. the sandpaper had nothing to stick to where it overlapped. so i just matched up the seams. hopefully you can see it in the 2nd photo.

last night i made 600 grit drums. i threw them all away. tonight i made 800 and 1500 grit. after a couple of screw-ups, i finally figured out what i did right/wrong and made some good drums. maybe 20 of each. with what i made last night, they barely worked on low speed on the dremel. tonights batches i was able to use on high speed. sped things up quite a bit.

so the 1st photo of the razor is what i did last night and then with some weak 800/1500 drums. you can see that it is getting a pretty good shine, but still needs some work. also, i did not spend enough time with the lower grit(<400) and it shows. the 4th photo is the same side with better 800/1500 drums and more time. much improved. the 3rd photo shows the tang stamp side. on this side, i went back to the 400 grit flapwheel and put in more work. then the 800, then 1500(remember i threw away the 600s). the nice thing is that i probably only used 2 drums on each grit on the last side. they lasted better than i thought.

more comments or thoughts please. i will try to work on another blade tomorrow and see about getting something higher than 1500 grit paper also.

vgod