Recommended sander(s) for corian plaque edges

[Rich Fennessey]

I really like your lighted monument sign. Are the Garden Pavilion letters flush with the surface or are they a layered on the inside? Sounds like you have a well proven procedure for sanding. I've had some luck with those sponge sand paper for some finish work. So far I haven't had to work on items that need to have the high finish factor and I primarily work on lighter colors. I'm still pretty new at this with a lot to learn.

I recently purchased one of those little sanding triangle attachments for a multitool. It is about 1" wide and 1 1/2" long. That works ok for getting into carved tight areas where hand sanding gets tiresome. I use that on my cheese tray board since pocketing out the interior to a depth of .15" causes a line around the exterior of the pocket. My 4" ROS won't hit the tight areas. This 7x10" tray has 3 areas that had to be hand sanded, the top left and top right corners and the bottom curve (top is where handle is).

SAM_1966.jpg

[Keith Outten]

Paul,

Nice job on the monument signs.

I usually don't have problems sanding or polishing the darker Corian colors, I prefer not to have to polish ADA signs due to the large number of them in the average job. Periodically I do make custom Corian signs and use dark colors and I use a similar procedure that you use. Ken Dolph has recently told me that the frosting from edge routing dark colors can be eliminated or reduced dramatically by adjusting the feed speed and router bit style. Since I manually route ADA sign edges the feed speed adjustment won't be very scientific and the bit I normally use for ADA signs is a classic roman ogee. Sanding a roman ogee profile is tough because of the detail.

I would like to offer dark color Corian for ADA door signs if I could find a means of producing a decent roman ogee profile inexpensively. Flat surfaces are sanded with 80 grit because they are required to have a matt finish and 80 grit paper on an ROS works great. Custom signs or large signs are sanded much like you do although I find myself using Trizac disks with water to polish large surfaces. I would like to try micro mesh pads with water if I can find them to fit my ROS.

I'm working on a solid black Corian directory now, its the most difficult color to polish the nooks and crannies in the window cutouts
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[Paul Phillips]

Rich, I can see how that would be a challenge to sand, you might give the steel wool a try and see if that helps get into those hard to reach areas.

Keith, I understand now what you mean, for the ogee edges the lighter colors would definitely be easier to work with. I had a job a while back that called for the Nocturn/black to be a high polish finish and that's when I discovered the 3m trizact, works great, the job came out beautiful but you're right, it's a lot more work, not to many customers willing to pay the extra for labor now days. Good luck on the directory, maybe you can show us some pictures when it's done.
For anyone who does a lot of RO sanding though, I would highly recommend the professional grade Dynabrades, I have both the industrial grade and the automotive grade, I prefer the automotive one because it's lighter weight, once you try one you'll see the difference, anything less is feels like junk to me, vibration from a lesser one numbs my hands after a few hours, It's like the difference between the old '68 GMC truck I used to have and the Mercedes 300E I had, the truck will get you there but nearly beat you to death, the Mercedes is so smooth and comfortable that you can hardly tell when you're doing 120mph!

http://www.dynabrade.com/dyn10/content.php?page=catalog

Paul