Helen Bates on mon 16 apr 07
Adhesive-backed) grinding or sanding discs
Anne Doyle was looking for (12" diameter) discs to attach to a plastic
bat and use on the wheel for smoothing bottoms of pieces after glazing.
This is a compilation of the urls my research and that of others
generated. I think another Clayarter provided Anne with the company she
finally chose to use.
This type of disc is promoted to studio and production potters by
Creative Industries Pottery Wheels and Ceramic Arts Accessories(tm)
http://www.creativewheels.com/ and are available under the CI brand
through several US pottery suppliers.
There are plenty of sites in the USA which sell these discs. Finding
them in Canada is more problematic, and the cost of shipping to Canada
(by vendors which are set up to do this) may be prohibitive if a courier
service is used. (Think $35 USD per order by a company such as UPS, in
addition to the USD price of the discs, the state taxes, shipping and
handling, etc.)
Looking for Canadian suppliers, retail or wholesale:
The Sandpaper Specialist (Royce Sales, St. George, Ontario, Canada)
http://store.sandpaper.ca/ sells 12" and even 16" PSA discs, but they
don't have the silicon carbide type. What they do have looks to be
garnet paper.
Engineered Abrasives Canada Inc. in Stoney Creek, Ontario
http://www.eacanada.ca/index.htm manufactures this type of disc, but has
no retail service. They may be able to do a minimum special order of 25
discs.
According to June MacDonald, KMS Tools in B.C., KMS Tools of B.C.
Canada - website: http://www.kmstools.com/ sell these in varying grades
of "roughness" for quite a bit cheaper than the Creative Industry ones.
They do mail order but don't seem to have the wet/dry silicon carbide
type. If having waterproof discs is not a priority because your
grinding is done in a well-ventilated area, and you wear a mask and eye
protection, then they have some they claim are "water-resistant, made
by"SAIT", a company in the UK.
June also suggested the Busy Bee chain
http://busybeetools.com/maps/ottawa.htm, but I don't know much about
them, except that they have some stores East of the Prairies.
Settling for US suppliers:
Abrasive Sales, LLC, in Long Beach, California:
http://www.abrasivesales.com is a US-based company operating out of
California, that sells Wet / Dry Silicon Carbide discs and can send
orders to Canada by either US Postal services at their cost, or by UPS,
whichever their customer prefers. Carlos Manalo was very quick to
follow up on any enquiries the day I logged into his site. He wrote:
"I personally handle all Canadian orders, and (...) am well-versed in
customs clearances, limits and other requirements, via US Postal Service
or UPS, or any other mode." Too bad I wasn't personally in the market
for these discs!
I know that 3M(tm) http://3m.com/ manufactures these discs (3M Wetordry
PSA Paper Disc), and finding USA based online sales vendors for them
would be easy enough but it's a different story with finding a Canadian
supplier. (For the latter, one would have to register on their
"Canadian" site and log in with a password.)
Anne finally found good info and the products she needed at Supergrit
(Red Hill Corp., Gettysburg, PA) http://supergrit.com and ordered them
(as well as a couple of the Zirconia(tm) type PSA discs which, are
supposed to be almost as tough as diamond disc but a lot cheaper.)
Search terms used nclude: discs wet dry PSA adhesive-backed grinding
sanding abrasive silicon carbide waterproof
Helen
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Helen Bates
Belleville, Ontario, Canada
Clayarters' URLs: http://amsterlaw.com/clayart/
Anne Doyle on wed 18 apr 07
Adhesive-backed) grinding or sanding discs
Greetings!
The good people at EA's Montreal affiliate finally got back to me
yesterday, and it is possible to get the 12" discs made by them,
a minimum of 10 discs per grit size, the prices are:
80g $3.20 each (CDN$)per box of 10, so $32.00 for the box
120g $2.74 each, same deal, must buy 10, so $27.40 box
240g $2.36 each, '' '' '' , so $23.60 box
Also heard back from stockroomsupply.com, but there again the discs came in
boxes of 25 or 50, and i just think thats too many for one person to order
at a time. I forget their prices sorry, ...
One thing with most of the US sites, some of them failed to process the
order online as i was using a Canadian postal code and they needed to be
phoned in but they were ususally quite amenable to using USPS instead of
UPS so we souldn't get hammered by UPS's nasty at-the-door-pay-now-or-don't-
get-your-stuff brokerage fee of about $50 on anything worth over $50 US...
Prices at Supergrit were considerable less, but then its a US$ sale and
there's shipping and probably taxes to pay at the post office... So, i will
know shortly...
I will post comments with the order from Supergrit once i've received
them... especially look forward to trying the Zirconia discs...
Thanx again Helen for all your research...
Enjoy the spring people, its finally here!!
Anne, in Saint-Sauveur where it snowed, sleeted, hailed and rained for the
past 5 days but its gorgeous sunshine today! Woohoo!
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