In the finishing room or on the jobsite, being able to quickly and cleanly cut up full sheets of sandpaper into whatever size is needed helps maintain productivity and reduces waste, but we often find ourselves with pieces of sandpaper that are too large or need to be a non-standard size. So what’s the Team at 2Sand to do? Innovate!

The standard size for sanding sheets is 9 x 11 inches. We have no idea why that size became standard any more than why letter paper ended up at 8-1/2 x 11 inches. Our guess is that some very early manufacturing process for making and cutting the sandpaper produced sheet of that size and it stuck.

As a result, when electric sanders were developed they fell into two working sizes: “half sheet” sanders and “quarter sheet” sanders. As the names imply, the pads and clamping mechanisms were specifically sized to use the 9 x 11 sheets without waste by simply tearing them into halves of 4-1/2 x 11 inches, or if needed, tearing the halves into two 5-1/2 inch long quarters. This can be done by measuring and marking, but simply folding the sheet will demarcate the sections without much ado.

The sheet of sandpaper can then be torn along the creases, but the thick paper and coating does not always tear cleanly.

Holding a steel rule or straight edge tightly on the sandpaper sheet and tearing across the edge will provide an acceptably clean edge for most uses. This is the easy way to create the 4-1/2” by 11" half sheets. 

Scissors or hand shears will cut the sandpaper readily enough, and BONUS: cutting finer grit sheets actually sharpens the scissors! Bear in mind though that any sheets coarser than about 120 grit may damage the cutting edges of your shears.

For hand sanding, especially in finishing, a variety of sizes may be needed. A simple jig can be made to measure and cleanly separate the sheets at whatever dimensions you need. The best way that we have found to do this is with a used hacksaw blade fastened about 3 inches from the edge of a 12 x 14 inch piece of plywood. We place thin washers holding the blade just above the board so sanding sheets can be slid under the blade, fastening the blade to the board with screws using the existing holes. 

We also marked our board with the dimensions we most commonly use. This set up allows pieces of sandpaper to be quickly and accurately positioned and then torn cleanly without needing any other tools. And it is small and portable enough to be used wherever you need to size your sandpaper.