Hi guys, it's Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor.
In today's Studio Tip, I'm going to teach
you how to hand-sand polymer clay. Now,
I've been teaching this method to my
Paid Tutorial Members for a really long
time now and I just recently realized
that I didn't have a sanding video in my
free videos, so I thought I would do that
for you today.
Now, I'm just going to be using
automotive sandpaper today, you can use
all kinds of different types of sanding
sandpapers and polishing papers, and
power methods of stuff but today, I'm
just showing the automotive paper and
hand sanding. And another day, I'll show
you some of the other techniques that
you can do. Now, you can also buff
your polymer clay, but I'm not going to
be covering that today, we'll be doing
that in another video as well. Now, in a
previous video I showed you, the
differences between unsanded piece of
polymer clay and a sanded piece.
These are two different ones that were
not in the video but I thought I'd show
you these so you could see the difference.
This one here is unsanded, and this is
sanded, and there's quite a difference.
And especially on any of the smooth
techniques, ones that have Mica Powders
in it or any of the pearls or metallics,
they really do way better if you have
sand and buff them. Not only do they feel
better, but the colors look better, they
come alive and it just really makes your
piece look more professional. And I
mean a lot of people don't like to sand,
I actually really love it, it's so... it's a
zen kind of thing, you get some
time to spend with your bead, make it
look great. Now, another problem that
often people say is, I tried sanding, it
doesn't work and here, it just leaves
it all scratched and makes it look worse.
And the problem is... here I've got a
piece of baked Black Premo clay, this
is a flat piece, nothing exciting about
it, but I showed what happens if you use
the wrong grit of sandpaper.
This is what a lot of people will do,
they'll go out to their shop, woodshop
and they grab some sandpaper,
obviously this one is extremely coarse,
but they think they found something
super fine like these ones here, and they
sand away on their piece. And this is
the kind of scratches that you're going
to get in your piece. With polymer clay,
because of such a soft material, you need
super super high grip sandpaper, most of
the woodworking sandpapers, I mean
they would consider a 400 grit sandpaper
super-high superfine finish. In
automotive sandpapers though, they need a
different type of material, they have a
different type of finish and they go to
a much finer grit. So I've got a
collection of different automotive
sandpapers here, I got these at
Canadian Tire but you can get them at
like Walmart often, or in any
place that carries... has an Automotive
Department, you know, that you can do body
work in, or any of that kind of stuff.
Anyway, so here's the different ones,
these are made by 3M, there's other ones
available but these are great because
they are wet-dry, wet or dry sandpaper,
they can handle being in water. This is
220 grit, and this is as course as I would
ever want to go. And if Doug can see it
up nice and close,
it's still a pretty fine grit, way
way finer than something like this. So...
but 220 is something that you would use
if you were shaping a piece. I would
start with 220 if I wanted to get out
these... if I wanted to make the edges on here
smooth and if I want to get out...
Well actually, this grit scratches were
probably made by something around a 220
grit. Then... so your rare... you're not gonna
need that much or just shaping. 400
is often where I start, it's pretty fine but it's
still a pretty coarse grit. 600 grit is
the next one you'd go to, sometimes it's
not available and you can only find 800.
800 would be your next one after that,
and as you can see, the number gets
bigger as the drains get finer. And then
I have found at my local store up to
a thousand, you might be able to even
find 1200, I think the next one is 1500,
then they have a 2000, 3000, sometimes the
4000, that's if you're really lucky but
these ones here will give you a really
good basis to do any of your polymer clay
projects with. So I'm going to sand this
one and fix it. Now what happens is...
the way sandpaper works is it's got all
these little grits, it's easier to see on
here but basically what they're doing is
these coarse grits, scratch little
gouges in your surface. The finer you go,
the finer the scratches become. So in
order to erase these deeper scratches, you
need to go with a little bit finer
coarse grit. I'm going to start with my
200. In a previous video, you might want
to check it out, I made some sanding pads
with my different sandpapers there and
some craft foam. So I'm going to use
those today to show you how to use them.
If you don't have them, then you would
just grab your sandpaper like this and
just put it in the water folded and rub
it, but these make it great to work with.
OK, so I'm going to start with the 220
grit, I have some cool water, the colder the water...
I mean it doesn't have to be super cold but
cold water works nicer with polymer clay
because it keeps the polymer clay
stiffer. If you're using really warm,
clay (water) it can warm it up and make it more
floppy. But I like to work with cool clay...
cool water, and a drop of dish soap, and
that just helps keep the sandpaper clean
and make it more efficient. And all you
have to do is get your sandpaper wet and
then you need to sand
your piece. Now, 220, like I said, is pretty
coarse but we're gonna see if we can
erase those scratch marks to start off
with the 220. And then I'm going to
move onto the 400 pretty quickly, so
let's just move on to the 400. Now you
can go in little circles,
whatever you want, there's some people
that are very picky about that, it
doesn't matter, polymer clay doesn't have
a grain like wood does, so that part
doesn't matter. You're going to get
little swirls in it, the coarser the
grain is, let me just get this and wash
it off, and show you what's happening so
far. Now, as you can see, those scratch
marks are pretty much gone now, it feels
pretty smooth to the touch but if I was
to buff it at this point, it's not going
to give a very high shine because the
light is bouncing into the little tiny
microscopic scratches. So what I would do
is I would continue with the 400 for a
little bit, and then move on to the next
one which is 600. And I wrote it on the
back here, just gonna... now I'm not going
to worry about there's a little divot in
the center there or a little nick in the
center of this piece. If I really wanted
to get rid of that, I would start with
the heavier grit and keep going right...
I mean that coarse grit, go right down
until that was gone and then come back
with these other grits.
OK, so that... oh you can see it already, it feels great,
it just feels smooth and buttery. Now I'm
gonna keep going, going to go to an 800
grit and you can kind of tell... like
people always ask how long am I supposed
to do this. Well, until you're done.
And it's kind of hard to say, but you can
kind of... if it's really working
hard, you can kind of hear it, then
it still have some clay to remove but as
it starts getting smoother and smoother,
it will sound a little quieter, and you can
feel it. Now, you can skip a grit if you
want to, but I find it's just each of
the grits work... do their best
work so you might as well use them.
Because if you do, if you skip a big... if
you make a big jump in your grit, what
happens is you're using a superfine
little scratcher to erase deeper
scratches and it's just going to take
longer but it is possible.
Alright, this is getting pretty good, I
can tell already.
Now, what will happen... because you haven't
done any buffing or anything else, it
will just... it'll have a bit of a matte
finish but it will feel amazing,
amazingly smooth. If you were to put out
a gloss finish on this, you wouldn't even
have to buff it first, you could just put
any of your gloss finishes on it, you
could also wax it with Renaissance Wax,
you can check out some of those other
videos. But that simple sanding will
give you a really really lovely finish,
and you'll be able to see it really well
on something like these pretty beads
here. So this process is really simple,
you just take your time,
you're basically... each step of your grit,
as you get smaller and smaller and finer
grains in your grit, the number goes up,
and you're you're basically removing the
scratches of the previous layer. If you
don't do a good enough job and you
get far along in your super fine grit,
you'll see a big scratch from your
earlier grit. Now, if your piece is really
nice to start off with,
you may not even need to start
anything very low, you could start a 400 or 600
grit because you're not trying to
really fix any flaws but if you've got
fingerprints or dents or scratches or a
you know, fingernail marks, that kind of
thing, you're going to want to start a
400 grit at least. If you're trying to
shape the piece, then you're going to
start out either 220 or 320 something
like that. So I hope that clarified the
sanding process for you and stay tuned,
there'll be more videos on buffing and
all kinds of things in different types
of sandpapers and things that you can
use. Alright, if you like this video, let
us know if you have suggestions for
other videos, techniques that you don't
understand, products you'd like me to
demo, anything that you would like to
learn more about polymer clay and we
don't have a video on it yet, then make
sure to leave suggestions in the comment
section below. And don't forget to
subscribe to our channel, we've got lots
of really cool videos that I'm sure
you're going to want to check out.
Alright, so we'll see you later and bye for now.
