Dust Collection and Random Orbit Sander Buying Advice

I'm working on a cherry bedside table here. And I am to that unfortunate part of the project where I have to talk about the S word, which is sanding. And it's something that nobody wants to do. But if you're doing woodworking, you're gonna do sanding. No matter how well you machine these parts they're gonna require sanding when you're done. So, one of the things I wanna talk about is dust collection on your handheld sander and make sure that you have good dust collection on your machines. So, first thing I'm gonna do is a real graphic demonstration here of what happens when we don't have adequate dust collection. We've got a couple of problems here. First, there's a cloud of dust in here. I can't see you anymore. Lots and lots of airborne stuff. The other thing that's happening is we're loading the sandpaper and that's gonna shorten the life of the abrasive. I'm gonna talk more about that later. Another thing is that we're leaving all sorts of stuff behind on the surface. So in fact, I'm not sanding my cherry bedside table I'm sanding a bunch of sawdust. And really what happens is that this stuff rolls around like a bunch of ball-bearings. It really reduces the effectiveness of my abrasive. And in fact, it takes me a lot longer to do something that I don't really want to do in the first place which is sand. It's gonna slow the process down. So let's talk about alternatives so that we don't have this problem. When I'm providing woodworkers with buying advice on sanders, here's what I tell them. We're looking for a random orbit sander, which in this case is also called a dual action sander that has some kind of built-in dust collection system. So in this case what happens is that the pneumatics come in the air comes in, drives the sander and at the same time, it generates its own air flow so that it's able to pull the dust off the work and push it into this HEPA filter. Everything is self-contained. What we want then is to marry that to an abrasive that works with that. So we've got a hook and loop system here. I can lay the abrasive on there. It's gonna pull the dust through that whole pattern send it into the HEPA filter. An alternative to this is a machine like this. This is electric. And in fact, this is the sister to the one that I just used before. It's again, got a dust shroud on it. In this case, a short vacuum is connected here and that's gonna pull the air through the shroud through the holes here in the abrasive to make sure that we have good dust collection. So now let's have a look at the difference between the two then we'll come back and really hit more on the importance of making sure that this is happening in your shop. Holy buckets that makes for a more pleasant working environment. Now here's the deal. We've already talked about the swarf, the sawdust that's left behind. So what happens there is that I'm sanding sawdust instead of sanding wood. It slows the process down. The other thing that can happen is if you're sanding a finished project. So for instance, in my case, I built a number of guitars. I use a random orbit sander to sand out the lacquer. If you're not pulling that finish off, what happens is it has a tendency to corn up in the disc. It builds up in the disc. And then as you're sanding those corns, those balls of sawdust or balls of finish are spinning and spinning and spinning and they're leaving little swirl marks behind in your raw wood or in your finish. So that's gonna really adversely affect the quality of your project. Additionally, wood dust is something that the more you're exposed to it, the more reactive you can become. So you may not have an allergy to cherry dust today but if you keep breathing it in there's some likelihood that you'll develop an allergy over time. So no matter where you are in your woodworking career I'd really prefer you have a long career and you do that by protecting yourself from dust. So here with good dust collection on sanders what we're talking about is a couple of things, quality of work which is the quality of sanding we can get on raw wood. Life of abrasive. The abrasive is going to last longer if we're removing the sawdust from it so it doesn't have the opportunity to build up. And quality of wood worker which is you want to make sure that you protect yourself from getting this sawdust in your lungs. So buying advice, when you're going out shopping for random orbit or dual-action sanders, make sure you look for a system that completely offers dust collection. So you don't get this cloud of dust like I had here.