Which grit paper to get and how to store them

[Belgarath]

I want to have a few sheets of Unigrit ready in case I need to sand out som e scratches, but I am not sure which grits are most handy to have lying around. I can of course get every grade from 1000 to 3000, but it is probably not necessary.
I was thinking 1500 for levelling scrathes and 2500 to even out the 1500 paper. Perhaps a sheet of 2000 for feathersanding here and there..?

Once the sheets have been soaked and used for a few strokes, they can be reused later? There is no need to take fres sheets every time I hope.
How do I store them correctly? Keep them wet in water, keep them moist i a ziplock bag og dry them and store them flat..

Wetsanding is not something I'm going to do a lot, but I believe it's a good tool to have and when I do need it, it's too late to go out shopping..

 

[Michael Stoops]

With a combo of 1500 and 2500 you can work small miracles! 1500 will level both scratches and texture quite quickly so I'd recommend starting with 2500 first and proceed from there. If you really do need to go with 1500 it's a great idea to finish with the 2500 by cross cutting over the 1500 grit marks (sand at a 45 to 90 degree angle to your 1500 marks).

Even on pretty hard paint I've found 2500 grit hand sanding marks to buff out quite easily with Meguiar's microfiber cutting pads and M100 on our MT300 DA polisher, either in 5" or 3" sizes depending on the size area you sanded.

Keep in mind that the sand papers should be allowed to soak in water for at least 15 minutes, or until the paper curls, before use. And then it's plenty of water while sanding, to clean out the paper, etc. If you're just doing small areas it's not a bad idea to cut a piece of paper into a size just large enough for your needs. I like to cut down our E7200 hand pads as well in order to keep things small and better controlled as needed. The attached image shows before (bottom) and after (top) of some orange peel removal I did on a resprayed bumper cover. The image only shows a small area, but nowhere on the entire cover did I use anything larger about half the size of the E7200 pad and in many areas I used pieces only about 1" square. This texture was leveled using only 2500 grit Unigrit paper by hand, and in the "after" shot the only thing to that point was M100/3" microfiber cutting disc/MT300.

Cutting pieces down to size means you don't have to worry about storing paper that was only used for a very brief period. However, should you choose to use (or need to use) an entire sheet, it's perfectly fine to rinse it out completely and set it aside to dry before storing it away. If you are going to sand pretty often then it's amazing how long the Unigrit papers will last stored in water. But storing a lot of paper in water for a few months at a time without using any is generally not a great idea.

Edit to add the following: If you notice that there is still some texture remaining in the "after" shot in the attached image, that's because there is texture throughout the rest of the car, too. I did not want to sand the bumper cover dead flat and have it mis-match the rest of the car in that direction. My intent was to match the existing texture on the rest of the car.

 

[Belgarath]

Thanks a lot Michael.