Home › Work activities › Smooth surfaces with abrasive materials or tools
O*NET detailed work activitySmooth surfaces with abrasive materials or tools
Stays humanHands-on work
17 jobs24 tasks
This is physical, in-person work with real objects, tools, equipment and places that change from day to day. AI can't do it for you.
Part of Smooth surfaces of objects or equipment, under the O*NET work activity group Handling and Moving Objects. Individual tasks below can carry a different label when their own wording calls for it (0 AI-ready, 0 AI-assist, 24 stays human).
Tasks built on this activity
- Guide sanding machines over surfaces of floors until surfaces are smooth.
- Scrape and sand floor edges and areas inaccessible to floor sanders, using scrapers, disk-type sanders, and sandpaper.
- Smooth surfaces, using sandpaper, scrapers, brushes, steel wool, or sanding machines.
- Sand or patch nicks or cracks in plasterboard or wallboard.
- Grind surfaces with a power grinder, or polish surfaces with polishing or surfacing machines.
- Buff tires according to specifications for width and undertread depth.
- Grind curved surfaces or areas inaccessible to surfacing machine, such as stairways or cabinet tops, with portable hand grinder.
- Smooth surfaces of articles to be painted, using sanding and buffing tools and equipment.
- Sand rough spots of dried cement between applications of compounds.
- Chip, scrape, or grind high spots, ridges, or rough projections to finish concrete, using pneumatic chisel, hand chisel, or other hand tools.
- Smooth, polish, and bevel surfaces, using hand tools and power tools.
- Chip, scrape, and grind high spots, ridges, and rough projections to finish concrete, using pneumatic chisels, power grinders, or hand tools.
- Trim, file, grind, deburr, buff, or smooth surfaces, seams, or joints of assembled parts, using hand tools or portable power tools.
- Grind or polish glass, smoothing edges when necessary.
- Smooth rough spots to prepare surfaces for waterproofing, using hammers, chisels, or rubbing bricks.
- Grind ends of new or worn rails to attain smooth joints, using portable grinders.
- Grind, scrape, sand, or polish surfaces, such as concrete, marble, terrazzo, or wood flooring, using abrasive tools or machines.
- Smooth or sand surfaces to remove ridges, tool marks, glue, or caulking.
- Polish final coats to specified finishes.
- Smooth rough spots on walls and ceilings, using sandpaper.
- Polish surface, using polishing or surfacing machine.
Tasks where it is part of the work
- Cut and trim carpet to fit along wall edges, openings, and projections, finishing the edges with a wall trimmer.
- Cut, surface, polish, and install marble and granite or install pre-cast terrazzo, granite or marble units.
- Repair cracked or chipped areas of stone or marble, using blowtorch and mastic, and remove rough or defective spots from concrete, using power grinder or chisel and hammer.