Buying Advice: Random Orbit Sanders

Tell you a little secret. Used to be that when I would do my sanding I would gauge how much sanding I had done, and how much I had left to go, by the amount of dust that was piled around the project, that was in the air, probably going into my lungs. Today that's not really a way to gauge your sanding, I mean number one, it's not a great idea. And two, with improvements in random orbit sanders you can't, 'cause the dust is all extracting through the sander. Let's talk about random orbit sanders, some buying advice for you here. First off, what's the deal with the random orbit sander? Well, what we've got here is a disc, which is gonna spin but it's also gonna oscillate. So it does create this random pattern, hence the name. And it's also sometimes called a dual action sander, or a DA, because of that random motion, that dual action motion that it makes. In fact this particular one reminds me a lot of the pneumatic, the air-driven DAs we used to use all the time when I was running a commercial cabinet shop. Things to look for. One thing I really like on this one is its low profile. What that brings to the table is that, if I've got a project that's already complete that I'm sanding, a low-profile sander like this is gonna be easier to get into tight spots. So for instance, between shelves on a bookshelf, into nooks and crannies of a project. The other thing the low-profile does is it helps reduce the top-heaviness of a sander. That's gonna help make sure that you can keep it nice and flat on your work, so that it's not tippy. Another thing to look for, it's great if you can touch and feel a lot of different sanders. And look for a lightweight sander, especially if you're gonna sand a lot of vertical surfaces. So think about, you build a kitchen full of cabinets and you're going to sand all of those case sides. If the sander is big and bulky that motion is gonna get old really fast. The other thing with the lightweight, let's do a little sanding on this one, is the ability to work around contours. Like anything, just the better it feels in your hand, the easier it's gonna be to use on your work. Another great feature is variable speed. Let's power this one through. The high end. The low end. Back to the high end. One way to use that, this is a good example. I'm sanding a piece that's got veneer on it. If you're a little apprehensive about maybe sanding through the veneer. You could lower your speed, take material off a little bit more slowly to sneak up on that final setting, making sure you don't go through the veneer. Now let's go back to this dust collection idea. You might notice that when I kick this on, a vacuum is running. It's called a tool actuated vac. It's a great way to protect your lungs. If you don't already know this, if you're not sensitive to dust today, doesn't mean you're not going to become sensitive, because it's something that exposure to dust increases. So, let's keep dust out of the air. Let's keep it out of our lungs. The way to help that protect yourself is to use what's called a tool actuated vac. The sander is plugged in, when the sander runs the vacuum runs, and then the vac cycles a little bit after I shut off the sander to clear the line. The other thing that helps my dust collection is netted sandpaper. So with this, it is drawing the sawdust right through the paper. And no, you can't see holes, because the sandpaper itself is kind of like mosquito screen, but finer. So one of the things that's handy about that is when I've got holes in a disc and a netted sandpaper I don't have to worry about aligning any holes in the paper 'cause it's automatic. No matter how I put this on there, those holes are going to have the opportunity to draw dust through. Hook and loop paper makes changing from grit to grit very, very easy. That's a feature that I really, really like as well. So a lot of great things to shop for in today's random orbit sanders. Definitely things worth looking at if you're shopping and looking to add a random orbit sander to your workshop.