It’s official. I am now a fan of Abranet abrasives!
I only wish I’d invested in their discs sooner… As in, before I started sanding those cutting boards!
Before the spontaneous switch, I was eating my way through the remnants of my Hermes Multihole collection as I ground away that end-grain walnut and especially, the hard maple. I was trawling the internet for the best value for money options; running low in each of my main ‘stock’ grits… With some money spare in my PayPal account, I spent £40 on a pack of 125mm diameter Abranet discs from Rest Express via. their eBay shop.
Abranet Pad Saver/Protector
My final £10 (or slightly less) was spent on one of these pad savers, which you can see I’ve peeled off in the photo above. As my research has taught me; they’re essential for use with Abranet discs, whose thin mesh-like material allows the hooks from your sander’s base pad to poke through… Meaning that, over time, they get worn away and as the hook and loop technology fails, you have to buy a new pad for your sander.
For my particular random orbit sander (Bosch GEX125-1AE), a new base pad costs about £15, which is almost double the cost of a disposable pad protector and I know that other brands (including Festool) will work out dearer still.
My sander’s pad does need replacing as I’ve abused it in the past anyway. Slipping discs and unnecessary vibration have been issues that have bothered me for too long. I now only need to decide whether to go for the soft, medium/hard or hard replacement pad!
In that £40 box of 50 discs, I received ten each of the following grits – 80g, 120g, 180g, 240g and 320g. At essentially £10 for a pack of ten, it’s not much more expensive than what I was using before. What’s really impressed me though is that I am still using my first discs of Abranet, despite having gone over each of the boards again. They say that the performance is further improved by hooking your sander up to a dust extractor (that reminds me that I need to make a hose adaptor for this tool…).
I feel like I can almost enjoy my sanding now… At least it’s likely to cost me a little less in the disposables department!
Thanks for reading.
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