My sanding is as follows

Everything goes through a dual head widebelt. 80/120 on the first pass. 150/180 w/ platen on the last head. Both faces.

Mirka electric sanders for all orbital sanders.

Exterior of cabinets: 150g if painted, 180g if stained. Depending on the specie, 150g.
Open interiors: Same as exterior
Interiors behind doors: 120g (typically birch interiors)
Drawer boxes: 150g
Interior Shelves: 150g
Open Shelves and wood tops: Same as exterior

I have a finisher with a failing finish on a job. I do not know which products he uses.
The installer is taping off scribes, marking, cutting, then removing the tape. Even with the super gentle Yellow Frog tape, it's pulling finish. Finish is a mix of staining and pigmented sealer or topcoat.

I'm being thrown under the bus by the finisher. His claim is that sanding with 180g is too smooth, and not allowing enough tooth for the finish to stick. I think he's full of it. In almost 20 years of running a shop, I've never gotten that complaint from the four finishers I've used over the years.

Just double checking that I'm not off base here in thinking that 180g isn't too fine. We're using a mix of Abranet with vacuums and 3M cloth backed discs at a down draft table for final sanding.
Project is Quarter Sawn White Oak.

If you say I should have it in house. I agree. Space and capital.

I deal with ML Campbell products and all the solvent products say don't go over 150 for whitewood sanding. If you are using waterborne I think MLC says don't go over 220, but don't quote me.

After sanding through the widebelt at 180 you should be sanding with 150. You can stop there. 120 on Hard maple if you are priming.

120 to 150 max for any wood.
Save your money and get rid of belts that fine.
Finishers work multiple jobs at the same time, for efficiency. Maybe mistakenly used wrong product somewhere in the process
Sounds like a problem with product compatibility, or contamination.
There is a lot of handling by the time you get the product to the finisher. Greasy hands, dust, scuff marks. I think a good finisher would do final prep themselves anyway.

There's a good chance you are burnishing the wood in the thickness sander. Especially if you let the belts get dull or don't have the best dust collection system.

We're sanding through whatever the widebelt does. I go to 180 because it's easier to rough it back up than to orbital it smooth

Ii always sand to 180g
Sprayed precat/post cat
No issues
For waterborne I go up to 220
I don't do a whole lot of stain but when i do,i will sand to 150/180
I don't think sanding to 180 is causing your issues
I think there's something else going on

"We're sanding through whatever the widebelt does." What the heck does this mean? The wide belt is making the decisions?

He's taking out the widebelt sanding scratches which would eliminate any burnishing that widebelt might have caused. Not to difficult to understand.

180 is on the edge of being acceptable for solvent finishing (catalyzed).

Thanks Leo, never heard it described that way. I never went finer than 120 in a wide belt. Even at that grit you have to be really careful not to burnish the wood.

Use sandpaper like you aren't the one buying it LOL.

It's what I've been told, and now I'm just passing it on.

Plus I think it's pretty hard to burnish wood with an RO sander.

That's been my take as well Leo. It's cheap. Labor is expensive. No reason to waste time using paper that doesn't cut

Let's talk about cutting wood after finish. When a cut is made it creates a weak link in the adhesion. You can't pull tape off from a cut from the cut side first. You have to pull the tape from the painted side first. There isn't any paint that can stand that. I'm trying to explain this as best I can. Pull the tape toward the cut, not the other way. It's the best I can tell you.

Never had a problem with adhesion and tape.

Ok then.

Sanded to 180 thousands of homes worth of cabinetry and finished them over 20+ years. The handful of adhesion issues over that timeframe have always been finish related. If I had to guess sealer was either applied to quickly after stain or tinted with too much or non compatible tint. I would bet money on it. You need to know what products he used and his schedule.

FM, This job is 3-1/2 hours from the shop. Oddly enough, 15 minutes away from where one of the best finishers I've worked with now lives. I sent him over to that jobsite, he said almost exactly what you said.

Current finisher hasn't told me what product he used. I've asked twice.

That’s a huge red flag Karl that he won’t communicate that to you. SW, MLC or any of the big finish companies can put it under the microscope and see where it is failing…but I can guarantee you they will find it wasn’t the finish products fault. In other words they will do the same thing the finisher is doing. Truth is he could probably use the exact same finish and schedule and get acceptable results 95% of the time. Maybe it was cold or high humidity that day or just looked at the can wrong before applying. Finish is half science, half art and little bit of voodoo. Finishing is not as predictable as wood working and the smallest of variances can inject a problem that destroys the whole project. Finish is something you want under your control or the control of someone you highly trust. A few doors get warped and it’s a slightly painful day. A finish goes south and it can cause bankruptcy if you don’t immediately remedy.

FM 100% agree with everything.

Plus nowadays the finishes that people are demanding aren't as simple as they were 15-20 years ago. People don't want a simple golden oak stain, they want something unique. Not better, just different. Some of them are getting a little whacky.

I've regretted for numerous reasons when I put this building up that I didn't add space for a finisher. I spent all I had, and all I could borrow at the time. Where I would've put the space would've been at the wrong end of the building as well, but that would've just been an inconvenience, not the end of the world. The way my building is orientated on the lot, I have room to easily double the size of my space. So adding another ~3000 sq/ft for dedicated finishing space would have to go on the opposite end of where the 8000sq/ft addition may someday go. I just don't have the capital to do the big addition right now, or the testicular fortitude to bite off that kind of debt in the current economy. We could probably use the space though.

The finisher that now lives up north wasn't real good at the business end of things. Great guy, awesome finisher, but things went sideways on him where he was renting space, and he just couldn't recover from it. If I would've had that space even just framed up on my building, I probably could've gotten the interior completed and everything ready to go for him before he had to be out. Which getting kicked out wasn't his fault. His landlord decided he wanted the space for himself. He just didn't have the financial resources to make a move, and it shut him down. It was unfortunate, he was a damn good finisher, and who I compare everyone else to.

I think the time has come to start getting serious about putting that smaller space on. Either starting a separate finishing business, or leasing it to a finisher. There is a ton of small shops around here that don't have the time, or the space to do finishing and they sub it out. It could probably thrive as a stand alone business. Plus remove a whole bunch of transportation issues and costs on my end. Current finish dude is 90 miles away, round trip. That is 10 gallons of fuel, two hours of windshield time per man per visit. Plus load, unload, load, unload, stage, load time. Whereas everything could be dropped on carts, and rolled to the finish shop for far less cost. I'm wasting mountains of money and productivity screwing around like I am.

Karl; you and I have corresponded a few times over the years so please forgive me if I’m remembering wrong but I don’t remember you being too high of production shop- very custom, everything built in house.

We did just shy of 1M last year two guys, 50% of doors outsourced OR about 960 boxes of cabinets and everything except those 50% of doors built in house. We finish everything in 400 square feet. 800 would be dreamy. I can’t imagine 3000. But 400 has been very doable.

I had to go WB these last six months for health reasons. I swore for years they would pry the solvent gun from my cold dead hand after trying WB 15 years ago but I was staring pretty close to the cold and dead due to the solvent. If you are starting from zero find someone who knows WB. It’ll save you so much on the building aspect but take from a hard core solvent guy who saw the light. This is one are where the greenies had it right. And don’t listen to finish reps find someone who holds the gun everyday and listen to them.

Not real high production, no. Three guys in the shop, plus me a few hours a week as office and other front end duties allow. We do pretty much everything but finishing and mouldings in here.

I don't even know what the numbers were for last year. If I were to guess, about 1 to 1.2. I don't have a clue how many cabinets or doors we did last year. The only number I know is we made 622 dovetail drawers for another shop last year. I don't have a clue what we did for ourselves in doors, boxes, and drawers.

The bay we stage product in is about 26x60, approximately 1500-1600sq/ft. We get a big job in, and that fills up quickly. I'm guessing you are using some of the shop space as variable space between finishing and production? I would want it to to be able to operate almost completely autonomously.
I'd probably put an addition on that was 40x60, so that would be 2400sq/ft. A dedicated finish space, I'd want to give that it's own compressor, so that needs a room to sit in. I could probably put a boiler in that space as well. A storage room, possibly a small office, and a bathroom. So that'd eat into that space. I'd probably want to do two sets of doors. One set from the shop into a foyer or hallway of sorts that has the doors to the other rooms in it. Then another set of doors into the actual finishing area. Help keep shop mess out of the finish area, and vice versa.

I like the idea of a booth you can roll in one end, and out the other. Product goes in one end. Comes out the other. Then you can keep things rolling in one direction as you go.

I want another downdraft table for scuffing doors and small parts. Works well just for cleaning the air too.

No matter what I do, the cost between doing a thousand or three thousand, the end cost won't be that much different really. Concrete and trusses are the biggest cost increase going bigger. Nobody bitches about having too much room. Except when the tax man comes around.

Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at. Some of the better per man numbers I’ve seen on here. Better than I remember from a few years ago when you posted a few door videos- that was you?

Space is nice. But I once had too much and it cuts into production as much as too little and it costs to heat and other overhead. And those costs never end. If your financing it interest adds up and adds to liability.

I’m guessing those numbers include your outsourced finishing? What percentage of your sales figure on a job goes to that? I’d figure 20-30%. That’s a huge amount of profit to be missing out on to say nothing about having control of your product. That’s an instant bump or makes up for a weak economy if things slide.

That's my guess at gross sales last year, and does include finishing costs.
I can't say as to how many, but I'd say most of our jobs are either site finished, or the finishing is handled by the builder. So while 20-30% is a good rough number for finishing costs, I can't just knock that out of my gross and say that was finishing. If I were to guess, around 30% of my jobs, I am responsible for the finish.

I don't think we did much more work in 2022 than in 2021, but the numbers are way higher, but so is my pricing. I was slow at raising prices and didn't start until June or July of 2020. Even then, I wasn't aggressive enough. Currently, my prices are up 40% of where they were at the start of 2020.

I'm a big fan of vertical integration. For all the reasons you stated. Control, and revenue stream. There's plenty of shops out there that don't do much and sub everything out but assembly. If it works, great, but I'd screw that up and have issues.

I bought a moulder a few years ago, but haven't pressed it into service. I need to make some major changes to the dust collection to accommodate it, and then there's the issue of floor space. I don't know where to put it. But that too would make another source of revenue, and speed up S4S needs as well as door sticking.
BUT, I think it's going to cost me $100k to slip that thing in place, tool up, and reconfigure the dust collection.

Yep, I made a video on how I make doors a few years ago.

Here's a thought. You have all that space sitting unused for probably at least 12 hours a day. So why no look into finishing in the evening? Figure how to fold up a booth that sits in the corner and do your finishing on a second shift? It may sound too simple and maybe you need the added space anyway but just an idea.....

I'm with the FM on this one, we have a very limited finishing area probably in the 400sq range and turn out a ton of product. It can defiantly be done. We also spray 98% waterbased since we are pretty much in a residential area. Find a way to use some of that loading area and make it work, you wont regret it! Feel free to reach out if you want.

To the original question, I'm sure it was dry time or some failure on the finishers part.

Paint grade we sand with 150. Stain grade we sand with 180. We use Indasha sandpaper. Beforehand sanding we sand with a two head wide belt 80/120 then step up to 150/180. Stain or paint. We walk back on paint grade with 150. We shoot solvent base products. We have never had an adhesion problem with finish. My two cents if you are pulling off finish with tape that falls on the finisher. The finish you are describing a combination of staining and pigmented sealer and topcoat seems like an invite for problems. For Example: We have done a lot of jobs in 2022 with white oak rift cut and black finish. The designers loved the grain coming through the black finish. No way a stain will get you there. We used a tinted black sealer two coats and then a topcoat. It is a cool finish not for me but what the customer/ designer wanted. Don't know if you can approach the finisher with his/her step-by-step finish schedule but that would be a good start. I can honestly say I never have had a finisher call me or contractor in regard to adhesion.

After re-reading for the 4th time I finally picked up on the 'pigmented sealer' part in the finishing description. I think as someone else noted, more than likely the weak link. It made the sealer not penetrate as well as it normally would have.

Karl,

I agree with your sanding schedule. We have always done 150 primer/sealer 180 stain. 240 between primer/sealer/stain and the 1st topcoat. 320 grit between topcoats. Never had a problem with adhesion. MLC always tells you 240 grit between topcoats when you are having any problems, but depending on the color/product/sheen you can see 240 grit scratches.

So you provide the finisher a surface(white oak) sanded to 180grit. He then stains it. Then he does what? I suspect he is wiping with a solvent that etches or smooths the substrate, which then gives the film finish too slick of a surface. Your 150 or 180 is not the issue.