How do I sand leather

[Tommy217xxx]

I recently picked up a bench mounted belt sander for cleaning up my work. It seems like I’m making more dust then actually making my work look better. 
 

What grit belt do I use? Also do I apply pressure? I’ve been putting my leather on the table and moving it back and forth. I’ve been working with 3 layers on 2-3oz chrome tan leather.

 

Thanks tj

[toxo]

This is a question that needs addressing. I feel that many of the videos that are out there are misleading inasmuch as hard thick leather is used or the amount of work involved in burnishing is understated. I too have found that the initial sanding raises so much more fibres than expected and I realise that a lot more work is needed to be done and wished I'd left it alone in the first place.

[Dwight]

You need to do 3 things:

1:  get 120 or 150 grit sandpaper . . . and you may even want to to up to 180 or 200.  It looks like you have 80 or 60 grit on there now . . . and it is way too coarse.  You also might want to  hook up a vacuum to the sander . . . I did with mine . . . it grabs the dust and makes a better experience.

2:  move your machine so there is almost zero distance between the sandpaper and the shelf on which the leather will sit.  Mine would not move so I made a topper for the table . . . out of 3/16 basswood plywood and contact cemented it to the table.  I purposely changed the sanding belt . . . and then placed the plywood shelf up so it was just barely touching the sandpaper.  When I started it up . . . it sanded the plywood slightly . . . but left a VERY THIN space between the shelf and the sandpaper . . . THAT is the desired effect.

3:  make sure your table is exactly 90 degrees angled from the sandpaper.  I sometimes have a problem with seeing my project . . . so I outline where I want the sanding to go with a black ball point pen . . . and I sand it until the ink line just disappears . . . works perfectly.

The technique is to slide the project back and forth . . . barely touching for chrome tanned . . . you can apply a bit more pressure with veg tan . . . especially if it is layered thicker . . . like a knife sheath or holster.

When you have your desired edge . . . comes the final tricky part you need to do.

Turn your project over and VERY LIGHTLY touch the sandpaper.  It will take off a little "edge" that the earlier sanding produced.

Try it . . . you'll like it.

May God bless,

Dwight

[Tommy217xxx]

10 minutes ago, Dwight said:

You need to do 3 things:

1:  get 120 or 150 grit sandpaper . . . and you may even want to to up to 180 or 200.  It looks like you have 80 or 60 grit on there now . . . and it is way too coarse.  You also might want to  hook up a vacuum to the sander . . . I did with mine . . . it grabs the dust and makes a better experience.

2:  move your machine so there is almost zero distance between the sandpaper and the shelf on which the leather will sit.  Mine would not move so I made a topper for the table . . . out of 3/16 basswood plywood and contact cemented it to the table.  I purposely changed the sanding belt . . . and then placed the plywood shelf up so it was just barely touching the sandpaper.  When I started it up . . . it sanded the plywood slightly . . . but left a VERY THIN space between the shelf and the sandpaper . . . THAT is the desired effect.

3:  make sure your table is exactly 90 degrees angled from the sandpaper.  I sometimes have a problem with seeing my project . . . so I outline where I want the sanding to go with a black ball point pen . . . and I sand it until the ink line just disappears . . . works perfectly.

The technique is to slide the project back and forth . . . barely touching for chrome tanned . . . you can apply a bit more pressure with veg tan . . . especially if it is layered thicker . . . like a knife sheath or holster.

When you have your desired edge . . . comes the final tricky part you need to do.

Turn your project over and VERY LIGHTLY touch the sandpaper.  It will take off a little "edge" that the earlier sanding produced.

Try it . . . you'll like it.

May God bless,

Dwight

Thank you Dwight. My belt is an 80 grit b/c that’s what it came with. I’m gonna do all your suggestions and we shall see.

[kgg]

15 hours ago, Tommy217xxx said:

What grit belt do I use?

I do agree with @Dwight but the grit of the sand paper selected has a lot to do with the speed of the machine. Too course a grit say 60 at slow speeds will tear chunks out while too fine a grid at high speed will burn. I use 120 grit on my machine which is a modified variable speed bench mounted buffer with a 4 3/4" long X 3"diameter sanding disk at 3400 rpm. 

kgg

[AlZilla]

A lot of people sand edges like I would a table top, progressively finer down to pretty fine grit. 

I use my sander to roughly clean up edges with 80 to 120, depending on what's on the machine.  Never hold it long enough to build heat. For the most part I'm evening up layers or cheating an edge to parallel with the stitching. I might hit an edge with 150 by hand before slicking it down. 

Bear in mind, I'm not interested in super slick, polished edges.

But, yeah, that sander can do a lot of damage in a hurry.

[Hildebrand]

I usually sand by hand unless it is a multi layer knife sheath, holster or scabbard.  If the edge is pretty square I use 200 then 600, if it needs a little squaring then I start with 150, and that usually gets me a nice smooth slick edge.  I use water and saddle soap for the slicking part.

Todd

[fredk]

I only sand to even up the edge, to take out bumps made by my bad cutting, or similar. I sand by hand. Depending on how bad the edge is I'll start with an 80 or 120 grit, working thru 240, 320, 400 to 600

[dikman]

A finer grit and go slow, not too much pressure as it's easy to burn the leather. I think chrometan is going to be problematic as it's generally a softer leather. And yeah, it can make a lot of dust!

[Tommy217xxx]

So this is what I was able to do with 60 grit belt. I sanded the top and flesh side slowly flat on the table. The I sanded the flesh side against the belt and finished up by sanding the edge. I’m gonna grab lower grit belts tomorrow.