Hook and Loop Setup

[Harry Whisman]

Hey Guys,
I bought a nice belt disc combo sander off craigslist and I'm wondering how I'm going to attach the disc sanding paper. Right now there's an aluminum plate to attach it to and I could go with the sticky backed stuff but I'm wanting to be able to switch to multiple grits without tearing the discs up in the process. This hook and loop they talk about sounds like something that might work but I'm not sure about how to set it up. What am I going to attach to the aluminum disc to make this work? Am I supposed to cover the aluminum with velcro strips? I don't seem to be able to find velcro discs.
hanks

[Bruce Page]

Harry, there's some hook & loop adapter info in this thread: 12" disc sander

[Greg Works]

I prefer the sticky backed sandpaper for big sanders and H&L for handhelds. I imagine a H&L set-up on a big disc would give a bit. You might not want that. I often use mine for sanding to a line. Also, I usually don't have great luck swapping out a lot of sanding discs. The holding power diminishes. It might get expensive if you change out a lot of large sanding discs - I not sure how large your disc sander is or even what sizes you can get H&L paper. I find that I really don't need a lot of grits. They're all aggressive with a 10" disc.

If you need multiple grit discs you might consider making them up and running them your table saw.

Greg

Hey Guys,
I bought a nice belt disc combo sander off craigslist and I'm wondering how I'm going to attach the disc sanding paper. Right now there's an aluminum plate to attach it to and I could go with the sticky backed stuff but I'm wanting to be able to switch to multiple grits without tearing the discs up in the process. This hook and loop they talk about sounds like something that might work but I'm not sure about how to set it up. What am I going to attach to the aluminum disc to make this work? Am I supposed to cover the aluminum with velcro strips? I don't seem to be able to find velcro discs.
hanks

[Jim Becker]

Greg hit on the reason that most of these big disc sanders use PSA rather than H&L...they are used for precision shaping and any "give" might compromise that function. And for that purpose, there's less reason to have to change the abrasive since finish sanding is done with other tools.

[Paul F Franklin]

I tried H&L on my disk sander (there's a sticky "hook" disk that you apply to the platen, and then the "loop" sandpaper applies to that).

In addition to the slight give that others mentioned (which actually can help in some situations, such as sanding a fair curve) the main issue I found was that it was easy to get the sandpaper hot enough to partially melt the hooks and loops. That sometimes causes them to refuse to stick; other times to refuse to release. Either way the whole setup is pretty much ruined.

No doubt my fault for using the wrong grit or bearing down too hard, but it's pretty easy to get a localized area quite hot very fast. After I used up the lot of H&L disks I had, I switched back to the adhesive type.

IIRC, the H&L disks were more expensive than the adhesive type as well.

[Jim Becker]

Paul makes a good point...heat kills H&L. That's why we all need to occasionally replace the H&L pads on our ROS as they begin lose their ability to hold. With a big disc sander and the typical pressure used to shape wood (as opposed to finishing sanding with the ROS), that heat is generated faster and can do a number on a H&L setup pretty quickly.