# Dry Sand Paper



## Spirit Detailing (Mar 29, 2007)

Mike, 
What brands do you recommend for dry-sanding original paint. 

Either machine or hand sanding.

Thanks

Brian


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## Mike Phillips (Jan 26, 2007)

Anything cheap for the initial steps as you're paper is going to load up and wear out faster than wetsanding.

Keep a terry cloth towel hand to rub your paper against as this will remove some of the build-up off the paper, you can also use compressed air or even a medium bristle brush but I usually use a terry cloth towel. (make sure it's clean).

Then for the finishing steps switch over to something with,


*Uniform Grit Particle Size*
*Uniform Grit Particle Distribution*
By Hand = Meguiar's Nikken Finishing Papers
By Machine = Meguiar's Unigrit Sanding and Finishing Discs, Mirka Abralon Discs or 3M Trizact Discs.

What are you sanding on?


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## Spirit Detailing (Mar 29, 2007)

I'm using Mirka Abralon discs mostly. I rarely go bigger than 2000 with abrasives, and then I would really just work the paint with 4000 on a DA. But its mostly been wet-sanding tbh. Dry sanding has its own merits at times though. 

I sand mostly german paint. BMW, Audi, VW, MB. But I try to avoid it as much possible and stick to rotary polishing. Not every car is a perfect candidate for rotary only though. 

Thanks for the response, Mike. I was wondering if there was anything else out there that people used in dry sanding. I guess I'm good to go then! :thumb:


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## Mike Phillips (Jan 26, 2007)

Remember anytime you're dry sanding you should be wearing some type of dust mask so you don't breath in anything nasty in the sanding dust...

Wetsanding, cutting and buffing is challenging enough as it is... no need to put your health at risk in the process.


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## Wouter B (May 4, 2011)

You could try Kovax sanding discs. They have machine discs for dry sanding from grit 600 to 3000. I used it at my work for some time and it works awesome :thumb:


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## moosh (May 8, 2011)

Can i ask why you want to dry sand? The use of water is to lube the paper and allow the sanded material to be washed off, if you go with dry paper it wont last long and imho could cause damage by clogged up particles.


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## Wouter B (May 4, 2011)

I personally always prefer dry sanding because then I can see what I'm doing. 

I don't know how to explain this but I will give it a try :

The little dents in the paint (orangepeel) will be invisible when filled with water during wet sanding. So you have to dry it each time to see if all the orangepeel is removed.

When dry sanding the orangepeel will fill up with sanding dust and then all the lower parts will turn out white. When all the white spots are gone the orangepeel is removed.

The sanding paper doesn't last as long when wetsanding but I prefer to work alot faster and use a little more sanding discs :thumb:

Removing the orangepeel on a door takes me maybe about 10-15 minutes with dry sanding with grit 1500. The next steps up to grit 3000 I will use wet sanding instead off dry because that's just to remove the sanding marks from lower grits and not orangepeel.

Hope you understand this:lol:


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## Mike Phillips (Jan 26, 2007)

I know guys that like to dry sand and guys that like to wetsand, kind of one of those personal preference subjects.


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## pawlik (May 16, 2011)

Long time I was 3M Trizact fan, especially when they launch P6000... But last few months if I need to sand I choose Kovax ones Tolex and Dry Buflex, they are very uniform and very fast.


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