Ultimate Products Customisable Sanding Sheets (240, 400, 80 & 1200 grits)

[Mike]

Customisable Sanding Sheets (240, 400, 80 & 1200 grits)

Ultimate Modelling Products

 

 

Sanding products are pretty much a necessity for us modellers, and finding better ways to accomplish tricky tasks is one of those things that we all find different ways of doing.  Ultimate are always looking for new products that will help modellers do better, or at least do it easier, which is why they've released these new sanding sheets in a variety of grits.  There are five packs available, four of which carry three of a single grit, the fifth contains four sheets, one of each grade, and is predictably known as the variety pack.  They arrive in a small clear bag with the Ultimate branding and their product details on the front, plus a few brief lines of instruction on the rear sticker.  To access the contents you need to cut open the bag, as they're non-resealable.  Making those bags resealable would be useful IMHO, as it would allow you to keep your sheets together, however the backing plastic colour is also a key to the grit sizes, and as you'd expect the smaller the grit number, the more coarse the abrasive is.

 

240 grit = White

400 grit = Yellow

800 grit = Orange

1200 grit = Black

 

 

It's easy to understand the variety of grits aspect, but what might not be apparent from first look is that these sheets aren't just pieces of wet'n'dry or something similar.  They're sheets of abrasive that have been bonded to a 1mm substrate of styrene sheet, which makes then rather useful.  You can use them as a firm, slightly flexible sanding sheet if you wish, but that's kind of missing the real point.  Because they're on a styrene backing, you can cut them to any shape you want with either a pair of scissors or a sharp blade with a few passes on the abrasive side.  Once cut, you can use them as you would a sanding stick, but without the bulk and at a size and shape that will be more useful.  You can cut a triangular shape that will give you three points to use for confined areas, cut a sheet into strips that would be very useful for getting right into corners and in-between delicate parts such as landing gear legs, with only 1mm plus the thickness of the paper needed to allow you access.  This is the task I'll be putting at least some of these to, as I can't abide leaving any moulding seams on such parts, and this can get quite time consuming when you have to make your own sanding tools.  Now I will just grab the required grit for the task at hand, slice a chunk off and get to work.  Awesome! 

 

 

I've been using a knife blade to keep the styrene nice and thin, but if you don't want to blunt your blade on the abrasive, you can just as easily use a pair of scissors and follow a pencil line to keep it from wandering off.  The thinner you cut the sheet, the more flexible it will get, but compared to my thinnest sanding stick, there's very little difference there, so it's not exactly a downside.  Any abrasive will clog eventually, even if you're using water with it, but that's not a problem because you can just snip off the clogged section and carry on until it's too short to hold properly.  As to delamination, I've cut a few chunks off with a knife and scissors, used them and abused them a bit with and without water, and so far nothing has come unglued, which is great.  You get a cleaner cut edge with a knife blade of course, but scissors might well be more convenient or cost-effective as their blades are more resilient when it comes to this sort of abuse.

 

Conclusion

A very useful tool to add to the arsenal of any modeller, whether you've stumbled across a difficult area to sand or not.  Your time will come, and these sheets will come in so handy.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

 

[Stalker6Recon]

Now that is pretty cool, another clever design giving the end user total control of the shape. Other pre-shaped sanding products often leave you cussing because no matter how hard they try, they just can't create the right angles for our unique needs. This seems to fill that gap nicely.

 

Thanks for the review,

Anthony