The sanding of black spruce wood prior to coating application was optimized for feed speed and grit size. As feed speed increased, the surface roughness and the surface energy of the samples increased. For the different sanding programs, reductions of the surface roughness and the contact angles were observed with a finer grit abrasive. The initial pull-off strength was statistically similar regardless of the feed speed and grit size. However, both the feed speed and the grit size affected coating adhesion following the accelerated weathering treatment. Because there was no correlation between the surface quality parameters and the pull-off strength, the latter had to be measured to determine coating performance on black spruce wood. In the present work, a two-stage sanding program combined with a feed speed of 17 m/min resulted in good surface quality and pull-off strength.