No matter how much you try to use mechanized sanding options, it always seems a certain amount of hand-sanding is unavoidable. Maybe it’s working into a tight corner or trying to follow a contour on a chair leg. So you go through some gymnastics to make sandpaper do those jobs.

You make special backing blocks or fold the paper or even glue pieces back to back for a better grip. Now there is an off-the-shelf solution that solves most of those hand-sanding challenges. It’s a double-sided sanding pad called Grit-Grip.

 

What it is
Invented by John Conboy, a carpenter, home builder, and woodworker, the Grit-Grip has two pieces of abrasive material sandwiched over a cloth center. The samples I tried were about 3-1/2 inches square, which is a convenient size to hold in your hand. This means not only is there abrasive grit on both sides to do work, but also your hand and fingers can get a sure grip rather than sliding around on the typically more slippery paper backing of regular abrasive papers.

The cloth sandwich also allows your to easily bend the pad to fit curved or contoured surfaces. It’s fairly stiff, so you won’t easily get it to conform to a complex moulding shape, but for typical curved surfaces such as furniture legs, and curved chair backs, it’s great.

 

Trying it out
One of the first things I appreciated with Grit-Grip is that the grits (available from 60-3,000) are not only color coded but also one side has the grit number engraved into the abrasive. That’s clearer than some paper-backed abrasives that have illegible grit number printing.

These pads are very comfortable to use and seem to hold up well even when curved in multiple directions. They are stiff enough that I don’t feel I need a sanding block on most flat surfaces, and for most curved surfaces, just a little pressure flexes the pad in place.

 

When using the pad in corners or other tight spaces, the corner stays rigid enough to keep working right to the edges, unlike trying shove a folded piece of paper-backed abrasive into a corner.

Sanding is not my favorite thing to do, so anything that makes it more efficient is worth trying out. Learn more at grit-grip.com.