Benefits of Multiple Power Sanders in the Shop
AJ MosesHow many power sanders are too many? Or, more importantly, how many power sanders aren’t enough? Contributing Editor A.J. Moses has come to recognize that increasing your collection of power sanders and can save you A LOT of time on your projects. Plus, he’s got some tips on how to best take advantage of owning multiple sanders to keep your project efficiently moving forward.
While it may seem initially expensive to add to the number of sanders in your shop. A.J. explains some of the economics that help justify having multiple sanders.
Sander Buying Advice
When you’re ready to consider increasing the size of your sander collection, be sure to check out WWGOA’s sander reviews. This will help you determine if you hard earned dough is best spent on a random orbit, belt, or finishing sander. Each of these types of sanders is very useful, and each does a slightly different job.
Using Your Sander
There’s a lot more to correctly using a sander than simply turning it on and plopping it down onto your project pieces. Random orbit and belt sanders require specific skills to make certain your improve the quality of your project, not diminish it. Don’t sweat it, WoodWorkers Guild of America is here to help. Regardless of the type of sander you’re using, we can help you learn how to use a sander.
Hi, AJ Moses here. Professional woodworkers sometimes have to get into a production mode in order to keep the lights on. One of the things I've discovered is multiple sanders save a lot of time. Not everybody's gonna wanna own four, five, or six sanders or something like that. When you have a project such as this where you're building a dozen boxes, I use multiple sanders to save time during the process.
If you note I have marked these with three different grits. 100, 150 and 220 and those are typically the grits I need when I'm working with these kinds of hardwoods. Sometimes I don't need them all, I can go 150 and directly to 220 and call it done. If you think about it, when you're sanding the side of a box in the finishing process, if you have to take a single sander and sand with the coarse grit and then remove the paper, put on a medium grit, sand again, remove the paper, put on a fine grit, and sand again, you're wasting a lot of time. Another thing to think about.
When you have to remove that hook and loop paper from the pad here, over time, it deteriorates pretty fast. It gets clogged with sawdust and some of the loops tear and it's less adhesive. If you have large sanding jobs or frequent opportunities to use multiple grits on multiple projects, this might be a good route to go.
have a dewalt that the speed control went bad on. Bought a Milwaukee Rewired the Dewalt. Now its 6" belt sander 120,Dewalt 150 Mil 220 Works great for me. Can completely sand each component w/o taking it out of vice clamps or whatever. No whining in Woodworking :)
Good advice, but where's the info on being born rich? Some of us are retired on a strict budget. And taken to it's logical conclusion, how about multiple table saws, planers, etc. each for a single operation? I would guess that's out of reach for the average guy.
I really thought this would be about the different uses for orbital, palm, mouse and belt sanders, not a poor chance to trick my wife into a new sander
I like this idea and I see a lot of tool brands demonstrated on this site. I own a Rigid RA sander and in general they are excellent tools. My main problem with them is the position of the switches on the grips. During operation I often turn the unit off and have to restart it. Many times this on/off function causes "scuffs" on the work which has to be removed. I have written Rigid and told them about this and offered a easy fix to relocate the switch and spped control elsewhere on the body, or fashioned a molded pad about 1/4" thick to prevent this problem, may also relieve vibration. Now obviously you all depend on manufacture support and likely shy away from negative comments about tools. However, improvising a "pad" that owners could make certainly is within WWGOA's scope since we see many shop mods and tools you employ.
I understand the concept but even in a production setting it takes seconds to replace sandpaper on a ROS. With all due respect what was a waste of time was this video. Unless WWGOA is trying to hawk ROS purchases and if that's true then an even larger waste of time.