Everyone is sanding floors THE WRONG WAY

there's one thing that everyone seems to know about floor sanding and it's wrong this video is going to ruffle a lot of feathers what I'm going to do is sand the floor in this incorrect way and show you just how bad the results are I'm going to show you how to fix the issue if you have created this issue already and I'm going to talk about why everyone seems to be scared to do it my way and why they shouldn't be scared at all I'm really nervous about this to be honest this floor has got a four millimeter wear layer I've already sanded it once I'm going to sand it badly again if this doesn't work I've got one chance basically 40 grit is the most common starting grit so I'm going to start there foreign [Music] now you might be thinking there's nothing wrong with the way he's sanding that floor and you'd be correct not doing anything wrong here foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] okay now I'm doing it wrong call the police there's a bad boy in town [Music] all will be explained in just a sec so now this is the 80 grit I just forgot to show the camera and now onto the 100 Grit foreign so right now the floor looks really smooth and most people be thinking oh my goodness this is great this is gonna this is gonna look fantastic unfortunately a lot of problems with Sandy you can't see until the Finish is down so what I'm going to do is I'm going to buff the floor just to give it a nice smooth surface and then I'm going to stain it and I'm going to lacquer it [Applause] [Music] foreign the floor might seem a little unnecessary but the reason why I'm doing this is going to become obvious a little later on [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] the first coat of finish and I've decided to go for semi-gloss because the more glossy the Finish is the more it shows up imperfections which is the whole point of this video right so it's getting pretty late here now so I'm going to buff the floor Hoover it and get the last coat down and come back tomorrow morning and see how it looks okay so it's the next day now and everything's all dry doesn't look too bad I think the color looks a bit putrid to be honest but uh on the whole it doesn't look too old oh there's the problem it is wave City look at that so the one thing that everyone seems to know about floor sanding is that you have to sand with the grain of the wood well if you just sand the floor straight this is what your floor is going to look like there's a lot of disagreement about what causes these Ripples and I'm going to set the record straight now some of you might say that the sounding machine wasn't balanced correctly or the wheels are covered in dirt because that can make it vibrate there's a problem with the abrasive there's dirt on the top roller so that the the belt goes like this there's dirt on the top roller and that's making it vibrate you've got resonance so sometimes when a floor is fitted on joists and there are certain width apart the vibrations from the machine can make the floor vibrate and actually causes it to Ripple and so you get this very consistent Ripple over the whole floor and that is what the majority of people said when this picture here was posted in a Facebook group asking what the problem was most of the people there said is because of the machine it's because of the floor but in reality you can have a perfect floor and you can have a perfect machine and it's still going to create those Ripples and at the same time you can have a machine that is that has a dirty top roller it's got dirty Wheels it's got a damaged abrasive but if you change direction it's going to get rid of all of that so none of it really matters if you just change the direction that you're cutting at least once during the sanding process it's going to be fine in the end finishing Sanders will smooth that out to a degree but I've actually had this many times on jobs before back when I first started and just like I think most professionals now they kind of they kind of ignore that it's happening and in this little debate online there were loads of guys that had like they were they were saying I've got 25 years experience I've got 30 years experience I've got 20 years experience and I've never not sanded the floor straight and so I went to their business pages and I could see pictures with with ripples in the floor so I I know that might sound bad but I just I noticed that it's everywhere before I show you how to fix this problem and how to prevent it in the first place I'm just going to describe to you exactly what causes this every board is ever so slightly different in density so you can see here where this board ends and that board begins this board is much more dense and this board is much less dense so if you're going across it with a consistent speed and you've got a consistent pressure on the drum and this board is more dense than this board then theoretically it's going to sand this board down more than this board not just that once you've created a little step down there and you go and you do the next cut you begin to create a line that goes across the floor so it begins to travel now not only do the boards vary in density you've got variations in density within the board itself so for example here you can see just here that's where the soft grain is and because it's just got that little bit larger area on the board that's soft it's created a line and and the same with the next bit so you got that bit there and then that bit there and it's created a line on both of those but then if you've got a knot that's much more dense than the rest of the board that will create a little bump up so you've got knots in the floor you've got the the soft grain which can cause little divots in the floor and then you've got these steps here that like go from one ball to the next so as the sander goes over a drop in density like this and it creates a dip and then the wheels go over that it will then create another line over here where the drum is at that point so I think you can just see it there so here's the end of the board and when the wheel drops down just after it that's where it creates this dip here because it's difficult there's the dip which is in line with the drum and the same is true for the back wheel so every time the wheels go over a dip or a bump and it just spreads out to the side and it translates into other areas in the floor until you've completely covered the floor in ripples okay now I'm going to demonstrate exactly what happens when you do a cross cut to try and correct these issues and with the dark stain it's going to highlight it perfectly [Music] [Applause] thank you okay so what you can see here is where the dip was it's still quite dark but where the peak was it's gone very light and so by going diagonally like this you're actually riding The Ridges the tops of the peaks of these uh of these ripples and bringing them down to level with the dips so as you keep going across it it's going to eventually take this down until it's level with this and then you're going to have this just as light as the rest of it so when you've got the drum going straight along the boards it drops down it hits this kind of Cliff of density and drops down into this board here whereas when you go diagonally you've left the board but some of the drum is still on the previous um dense board and it's holding it up and riding those ridges to bring it down flat and that's why you can kind of see the ripples in the floor you can see where it's kind of riding the ridges and taking them down to level with the valleys not to belabor the point but if you watch my crew demonstration here you can see that the drum kind of just drops into the dips exacerbating the problem whereas if you go diagonally across them it just Glides over those Peaks and brings them down to level with the dips the next thing I promise to talk about was why people seem to be scared to sand their floors diagonally but just before I get to that if you found this video helpful please hit the like button please hit subscribe because I'm trying to get to 100 000 subscribers I will be active in the comments section below and if you're interested in taking the video course then there's a link in the description if you're in the process of sanding your floor and you've created some imperfections like this then don't worry too soon because it can't possibly be as bad as this was so the people taking my video course have told me that they're scared to sand their floors diagonally because they're worried that the scratches won't come out well I hope that clears that up

Channel: How To Sand A Floor

Views: 202,206

Keywords: floor sanding, refinishing hardwood floors, how to sand a floor, floor sanding tips, diy, wood floors, how to

Id: 9IYkh4E2VUA

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 27 2022