Start by making up a sanding cylinder. I wanted all dimensions the maximum allowable to minimize flexing. One end was .500" which was the maximum size that my quick change tool post's boring bar holder would accept. I then turned the sanding end to about .025" less than the inside diameter of the cylinder. In this case, about .725" but this dimension isn't critical.

Cut a piece of wet /dry sandpaper to wrap around the thick ( sanding end ). Apply spray adhesive to both the sanding bar and the sand paper and let sit for about 15 minutes before bringing them together.

Square up the QCTP

Mount the sanding bar

Align the sanding bar with the cylinder. This one was a close fit.

I applied a liberal amount of water soluble cutting fluid.

Run the sanding bar into the cylinder to a depth sufficient enough to ensure contact along the full length.

Using the cross slide hand wheel, move the sanding bar gently against the inside of the cylinder.

Using the hand wheel, start moving the sanding bar in and out along the length of the cylinder. After a minute or two, I loosened the sanding bar and rotated it to expose a fresh surface.

After a few minutes, you can see that a fair amount of material has been removed.

After just a few minutes using 280 wet / dry sand paper, this was the result. All of the boring bar tool marks were gone and I had this uniform finish. Now it's just a matter of working through a few more progressively finer grits of sandpaper.

To clean up the old sandpaper and glue, just put the sanding bar back into the lathe and cut it off.

Updated: September 08, 2009