Sanders Now

While choosing an appropriate floor sander for any project, it helps to know the different kinds of sanders to come to the right decision.

At the outset let’s take a look at the edging sander, the first of floor sanders. These are used in conjunction with other sanders employed for larger projects, quite like using edging tools while painting. For those difficult to reach narrow areas this smaller sander is ideal. You know that larger powerful machines of the kind of drum or orbital sanders can’t be used for working on those difficult to approach areas of any job. Generally, these are hand held tools and so lightweight, offering ease of operation but are powerful enough to ensure that the wood is stripped off and rounded smooth. Some models work with orbital motion, but they are not to be confused with orbital sanders which are very powerful and ideally suitable for working on hardwood floors. In any case even an orbital machine wouldn’t be used for the purpose of edging.

Most people are generally familiar with a drum sander. Usually, its design includes a rotating drum with paper coiled around. A drum sander is practically needed for large projects but not readily available for sale. On hiring a drum sander, you should also collect instructions of the grade of paper to be used, such as fine, medium and coarse. A wrong judgment could easily disfigure the flooring. That’s why it’s important to get the information before hand and to be very careful with its use. This is often the best choice as far as deeply damaged floors are concerned, because it is capable of smoothening the cracks and other rough areas and stains.

Square pad sanders also prove to be very useful tools. Though not as powerful as a drum sander, they are easier to manage and thus more suitable for DIY kind of projects. Usually, they take a bit longer to finish a given job, the risks of accidentally over sanding are least. Another alternative could be an orbital sander, which is again an excellent way of redoing your own flooring projects, wanting to remove wood. An orbital sander would move in a circular way, and can by and large be used irrespective of the grain. Most of the sanders described here come with some kind of dust bag, which would need to be emptied now and then throughout the process of any big project.

Sanders are all self propelling, and you wouldn’t take long getting used to one. However, you need to be alert all the time to have a control over its operation, all the more so while using a drum sander or similar high powered equipment. That makes it important to employ larger machines for flooring projects and use the smaller sanders, like the hand held orbital or similar devices for the smaller jobs of the kind of furniture and other wood working projects. While it’s the choice of sander that helps efficient execution of the project, it’s the use of appropriate paper that delivers beautiful looking appreciable output.

In any wood working shop, the edge sander is the second most often used tool, and the first one as you know is the table saw. That’s especially true in case of designs that involve a lot many curves. Though an edge sander is perfect for long straight edges, it can also be gainfully employed to sand inside and outside curves efficiently.

This sanding machine can be exploited to sand large, round table tops by a jig with a pivot pin in the center. You get machines with 6″ x 108″ sanding belts with about a three-foot platen surface. Outside curves can be sanded on the front table while the inside curves are done on the end table using the curvature of the idler drum. The edge sander wouldn’t oscillate and neither the front table nor the platen should get tilted.

The best way for working on this machine is to use a pencil for marking on the work piece the final profile to be sanded, and then cut just outside of that line by about one blade width with the band saw or a jig saw. If the job is too big to be managed on the band saw, use a jig saw for making the cut. Then, use the edge sander for getting the final dimension on the job.

An oscillating edge sander prevents the sanding belts from loading up and thus burning, as it constantly keeps moving the sanding belt up and down with respect to the work piece. You can sand bevels and even compound angles by a sander that has s tilting front table or a tilting sanding head.

Those experienced with handling edge sanders are usually able to know when the belt is going to give up, as it would make some typical rumblings followed by a loud bang. An experienced operator should be able to sense it and avoid getting hurt.

If you are unable to anticipate that the belt is nearing its death, make sure that you don’t use a belt for more than six months in any case. That’s because the adhesive that holds the lap or butt joint together tends to dry out and weaken with time. You would better keep it in mind while ordering sanding belts. That means don’t order belts more than what you are sure of using within six months! Butt jointed sanding belts deliver a smoother finish but lap joints are stronger and less likely to come apart.

Another way of avoiding such explosions of belt is to, as far as possible, avoid sanding sharp, pointed edges that could rip into the sanding belt and split it up. Machine with some coating on the platen, such as graphite, help reducing friction between the back of the belt and the platen and thus reduce heat buildup that shortens the life of sanding belts.

Another essential requirement for any edge sander is a dust collector which must be large enough to handle any amount of sanding dust that is created by the machine. If your present dust collector can’t suck up at least 600 cubic feet of air per minute, you need to add the cost of that machine to the cost of the edge sander. So, while calculating the cost of an edge sander, you must look at the total cost, including the dust collector and not just the cost of the edge sander alone.