Can a Festool 150 replace a Milwaukee?

Is there anyone who has used both and can comment on this? I am tempted to get one because my neighbors don’t think it is normal to have sanding dust all over their homes, patios, and cars. Losers.

I wouldn’t mind spending a little extra time sanding for the convenience of doing it in my garage with the extractor, but I just doubt that that little tool can move anywhere near the material that a Milwaukee or even my Harbor Freight sander can move.

Anyone?

why not just get a fan and make a DIY filter box? i know different ideas of how to do this are stuffed in the archives somewhere. i remember kokoa laid out how he did one that seemed pretty easy

Hello bb30, I’ve got one of these festool sanders but I don’t use it to sand a whole board.  You’re right that it is good for fins and ding repairs but when I’ve sanded a whole board with the thing a single concave turns into a 12 concave.  I would be interested to hear your styles bb30, also Lemat said he sanded a whole board with these sanders and the guy who sold it to me said epoxy guys used them.  But my experience is that the board looks flat in the sanding bay but after the board gets wet rubbed the bottom has 10+ concaves in it.  Maybe it was my sanding style but a small 6’’ hard pad designed for sanding flat timber??..how do you sand a convace with that?

 

Replacement pads are $60!!  There’s a super soft foam pad you could finish with but it’s $25 and the velcro clapped out after about 5 boards.

 

Sandpaper is great…but the most expensive paper you can get, sometimes you put a new piece on, go over a fin box and the paper rips first go from the dust extraction holes.  (flat timber doesn’t have daggy bits of resin or fin boxes).

 

So I don’t know how you sand a board to shop quality with these things, but I would love to be enlightened as to how… I use a makita sander/polisher and 8’’ power pads and save this expensive contraption for rails and dings.

Greg, it’s good for dust extraction, but the bosch is similar at half the price.

The CT dust extractor is good, you need a cyclone unit before it goes in to save filling up the outrageously priced bags and clogging the fliter. Filter still gets clogged anyway.

Surely any of this dust going into your garage/work shop is bad even after the filters.  I don’t think any of the air should go back into work shop, if the festool takes 99% of dust out you still have 1% of fine dust (invisible) floating around, should vent outside.

Best solution would be sander > Cyclone dust separator (goes on top of old resin pail to catch dust) > powerfull vacuum (no filters), vent outside. Cyclone units take out 99% of dust.  I use it on the planer too.

 The Festool 150 is great if you can afford it. The 6" pad comes in three densities. The selection of paper is really good and so easy to change out. You can use it with one hand with the other on the board when doing rails with board flat on you rack. The random orbit mode can be  switched on the fly but you have to turn the machine off to go back to orbit only. Ok rpm range. The dust collection is amazing, but I wouldn’t turn the dining room into your sanding area. Still need a quality dust mask and 80% or more is collected with the vac attachment. The quality is over the top as most germam designed and manufactured things are. Because of the 6" pad it takes longer , but the good news is glass on fins are easier to sand and the ability to one hand it easily as mentioned above. If shanping foam with your sander is your thing, the festool has nice control. I have an indoor soundproof room for my festool use for boards up to 14 feet. Still need good hearing protection also.

My makita is also awesome. Japenese designed and built. rpm range is the best. Changing the paper on the pads with spray adhesive is a chore but easy. Has such a great feel in your hands, easy to control if shapng foam with it.  Have to use it in my enclosed  outside part of my shop because of the mess.

The most important factor in efficient and quick sanding has more to do with the lamination, filler coats and final coat. 

If you have the bucks to buy one I would recommend it because I have used it for body work on my trucks, carpentry projects, and other non surfboard projects. I have had my current makita for 13 years and my festool 150 for 6 plus years without any problems except new brushes for the makita. Night and day difference in reagards to dust. You will be just sweaty instead of sweaty and covered in sanding dust.

BB30, thanks for the thoughtful comparison. This might work for me. You can’t have too many tools. Unless your wife finds out about them.

Actually if you sand 3 boards per week a festool is fine. If it is 30 boards per week, use the festool money for a proper sanding area with good ventilation and filtration.

My $200 makita has been a $15 per year investment and still running strong. Never used a cheapo harbor freight but I have heard them running and I would save my money and get a makita.

When the wife finds out about the festool, the honey-do list will start to grow. You can buff out all your counter tops with that machine. IF you need more justification just ask. “It is actually going to save us money dear.”

I have a flat rectangular sander and the stubby handle jig saw also. Like the 150, they can be used for other things than just surfboards. I tried the planer and it is great for everything except foam mowing. The mondo router is really nice but I just don’t need it. My digital makita router is 60% less expensive. just as powerful and will last forever. Keep an eye on craigslist for used festools for the deals. People who own them usually take very good care of them.

Greg,

 Not sure what to tell you. I am epoxy only though.  If you are having problems with a 6" disc  getting extra concaves then an 8" on a makita won’t help you either.

The “medium” density on the festool is equivelant to my “firmest” 8" pad.

 Difference # 1:    My makita 10 amp goes up to 3000 rpms. and my 6 amp festool only goes up to 600 rpm in orbital mode. 

                     2:    My makita has no random orbital mode

                     3:    My festool pads last 2-3 times longer than various brand pads I use with my makita.

     4:    Pad prices 8" non vac are $20-26 and festool are $40

The festool is way more forgiving in the hands of novice sanders versus a makita because of the random orbital mode.

In skilled hands the makita wins every time in speed and for polishing. For a sanded  finished board you would be unable to tell the difference.

BTWm festool 6" hook and loop pad holds an 8" wool polishing pad.

Sanding complex bottoms should be no problems with a soft pad. I use the hard for fin box cap removal and will hit the flats of the board with it. Go the the medium and get the shinies out and go to the soft for the rails and a final once over of the board.(pre final coat, 50g,80g,100g,120-150g) Channels need to be hand sanded just like always.

With a well cured green room epoxy glass job, a 6’ board you will use 1 sand paper disc of each grit with still life left on the paper.

 

If you are looking for quick and easy dust control in your shop  the festool rocks.  My fan alone for my old shop was $1100 in year 2000. My time to install it and cost of ducting and filtration made it even more bucks. For the price of my fan alone will have you up and running with a festool.

What ever sand paper grit recepie you use for boards won’t change with festool. I would stick to whatever gives you best success. Like I said before. The board shape(bump free), tight lamination and filler coat has more to do with ease of sanding to me than what tool is in my hand. 

I can only suggest you have all three density pads on hand available to use. If you are using epoxy, use surfacing agent with your filler coats and final coats for more efficient sanding. And as always, let the tool do the work and don’t get worked by the tool.

 

Quit being a bad neighbor!  Tighten up the room/garage or whatever that you are sanding in,  I’ve sanded in alot of makeshift rooms and semi-Hawaian open air sanding areas and never coated anything my neighbors owned,  I’ve never used vac systems, but have used directional fans and extraction systems… All of which were probably considered pretty da~~ned crude by Swaylock standards. Milwaukee and Makita sander/polisher,  If you own a Festool you are definatly a “Yuppy Hobbyist”.  Lowel

If you own a Festool you are definatly a “Yuppy Hobbyist”   Gold!! hahaha

It is nice to have nice tools though, however, if done again I would not have bothered with the full German set up.  bb30 is it useful for epoxy instead of 8’’ power pads?  Sounds like the full range of pads is needed, I gave up on using it for whole boards…maybe I’m a kook…

I am just a hobby board maker. About 100 boards, shape+lam, in 15 years, first 15 in PU (clarkfoam) PE then EPS/epoxy. So i never have to sand more than 2 boards in a week. I have a cheap rotative sander and a semi cheap high orbit 150 random orbital. I make sanded finish, not the best one but same quality than most of shop boards. I sand cured epoxy fill coat (hot box) with random orbital hard pad and 50 or 60 grit, hard pad and soft interface for small curves (rails and concaves), it’s very fast if resin is really hard. Finish coat with PU sand with random orbital too start with 180 hard and soft pad then 240 and 320 soft pad.

I never use the festool but i know a local “big” surfboard factory that only use it. I sand an epoxy mastic on a 7.5m racing sail boat with BOSH pro and it was really efficient, guys from this boat factory explain me that they didn’t use any more “old school” rotative sander.

Now i lam with peel ply, no more fillcoat, light tight and seal lam, no more sand of epoxy, direct finish coat and start sanding at finish.

Sorry for my frenglish

Greg Just Pony up and buy the Festool, Then I can barrow it.  by The way my neighbors sent me a letter saying i was in violation of the HOA by running a business. I told them it's my hobby. It's been an on going problem. You are doing the right thing by keeping the dust down.

Aloha GT

I’ve had the125 rotex with with the CT22 for around 6 years now

good tool to reduce dust but slow everything is expensive the bags and the pads break down from sunlight

I agree on a vornado fronting the vacuum

these are good for allot of other things like indoor home repairs and stuff.

But I think a milwaukee is well worth it something about heavy tools and the speed they can cut and flatten

My variable speed makita is shot as was my harbor freight probably from abuse where as my festool seems to put uip with me

butalso  we have these legacy rusty 30 year old single speed craftsman sanders with those hard bolt on rubber pads that refuse to die.

can’t beat them old school tools.

 

 

marsh,

 THREE pads are needed(soft, medium,hard), the full kit comes with one so you need to buy two more. My soft pad lasted 3 year and I am still on the same medium and hard one for 6 years. My dust collecting bag is reuseable and  cost 100+ dollars. Still fine for over 6 years. My hose is getting hosed from abuse, but the duct tape is keeping it on life support ncely.

 

My makita I have 8 inch pads with 2 soft, 1 medium and 1 hard. I have bought dozens of these things over the years.  I cut the nuked ones down and make 3 and 4" pads out of them if possible.

If you are only using one 8 inch pad to sand a board, i will definately race you with my festool. Before I start sanding with the makita I will have 3 grits ready to go on my pads and my 50 grit on my stiff pad. Festool is effortless change outs of pads and sandpaper. I have never worn out the hook and loop on any festool brand pads. I have sanded hundreds or boards and done so many carpentry projects, sanded the roof of two trucks, buffed out cars, countertops and this thing is still kicking. The vacuum system is a dry vac at your disposal to use. I suck down the vac bag boards for 2o or so seconds on the initial pull to give you an under 90 second full vacuum of composite board. The festool store is 16 miles from my house. If something was shoddy or breaks I go to them for solutions/refunds. Haven’t had to go yet.

If sanding mess is a concern the festool will change your life. If you have a nice sanding area with a blower it would be a waste of money. 

 

I will buy your whole set up if you have the CT33 vac. Just give me a fair price. If it sucks so bad you might as well sell it.

The other awesome thing about the 6 inch festool pads is they fit in adult hands like a glove and can be a beautiful way to finish sand a piece of foam or your wooden board prior to glassing.

The most swesome thing about the festool has to be you get the privilege to become a yuppie and be taught the secret hand shake and get the membership card.

Hi Greg,  Buy the sander but forget the vacuum.   We’ve used the Festool 6" 150 RO (combination rotary / random-orbit) since 2004 and it cannot compare with a Milwaukee for sanding full boards.  You’ll spend forever even on a shortboard; too slow and light.  We use it exclusively for repairs and it excels in that area from rough 50 grit to 500.  The sander will almost last forever, but does need periodic maintenance and parts depending on how much you use it. The Festool vacuum system is very underpowered as it was designed to be a balance between noise and reasonable dust removal (it’s not completely dust-free by any means nor worth $400).  The cost of the bags and filters is very expensive also along with the sanding disks, and a set of 80, 120, 320, 400, 500 (50/box) is over $250. Currently, we use the RO 150 with a 5 HP Rigid shop vac and a “dust deputy” cyclone between the two so the vacuum sees almost no dust.   It can easily be switched to a planer (or another sander) as well, but you need to control the hose and power cord with a swinging boom arm.  Focus on the hose and cord management, without this any vacuum system will be a pain to use.

We use the Milwaukee with a dust catcher attachment (gets about 80% of the dust) for flat surfaces and the Festool for rails and between fins.  With a foam pad on the Festool, hitting weave on the rails will be gone forever.  Of course we’re talking about sanding decent glass jobs, not some lumpy-bumpy mess.   We do all of this dust control because our shop is very small, and we need to glass without having to clean everything after a sanding session.  The benefits of using this system are faster sanding,  a planer dust system, no bags (with the cyclone), and almost no clean up.   The Milwaukee and vacuum running at the same time needs 20 amp power, and will make enough noise that the neighbors will have something new to complain about after the dust is gone.  If you decide to get creative and sound-proof the vacuum, remember that it needs an air discharge port and gets hot real easy in an enclosed space.

while there seems to be differing opinions, it is very clear that Swaylocks works.

all the best to all ya’ll

 

 

Hi Petec, how much time for sanding an epoxy shortboard hotcoat?

With my 6 randomorbital “cheap” sander i sand shortboard hotcoat in one hour, i can’t do it better with may orbital power sander.

I use a “strong” karcher vacuum cleaner connect on my sander, effective against sanding dust.

Now i use peelply on lam, near no sand, flat tight lam, perfect grip for finish coat. Why i don’t use it before !

Sorry for my frenglish

Hi Lemat,  The problem with the Festool is that it doesn’t get things flat as easy as a 8" pad in a rotary sander, so it takes longer for more overlapping passes.  This is critical on poly boards since you have to sand everything to get the finish coat to stick.  On bagged epoxy, there isn’t much sanding unless the hotcoat is sloppy and you don’t need to sand everything to get the next coat to stick, so a random-orbit can be used.   Stingray had a photo of his sander on the 70’s twin restoration thread.  I’ve used a similar setup (6" Rigid sander instead of Dewalt) and it works OK for small areas and rails. Most of these sanders have a vac port and you just plug in a cuffed 1-1/4" hose.  My experience has been that these don’t last very long and you need a powerful (about 5HP) vacuum.  All sanders with variable speed have limited life because the speed controllers get hot and burn out due to the “on” time when sanding boards.  This varies with how expensive the sander is due to electronics used to make it variable. 

Gidday bb30,

Thanks for the post it was very informative.  It was wrong for me to bag out a tool if I’m not using it properly, when I got the machine I didn’t even know there were different densities of pads!! . At some stage I will get kitted out with the other pads, in Australia however they are actually $69 per pad over here!! and I have a system that works (for polyester) with a range of pads on the sander/polisher similar to you.  I actually bought an ozito sander/polisher (chinese $100) as a second machine so I don’t have to change pads from machines (faster) works fine, not all yuppy here Mcding, still got street cred with cheap tools ha!!  I use a 12’’ blower going into a box which then goes into bushland next to my house…not the best but I’m open to ideas…

 

I’m not a pro so will try to be more humble in my posts, I appologies if my first post seemed rude or egotistical, was just stating my experience. DIY home builder, I’ve done about 35 boards from this time last year, so I do a couple.  My glass jobs are not hack efforts still the sanding disks can still easily rip on a clean finbox due to the holes that are in the pad, so care is needed.

 

Greg I went down the Festool path for dust control in my home workshop so you will not be disapointed on that front.  Festool beats all other sanders for dust extraction off the pad.  The dust extractor that came with my machine is the Cleantex CT36 has HEPA filters, with a cyclone unit the bags take a long time to fill up.  Petec with all due respect, I’m not sure which Festool dust extractor you tried but these machines suck like a hoe on payday.  But everything about them is pricey, if the Ridgid works with a cyclone and cost is an issue, Greg this could be a better path.

DIY’ers have all day so time is on their side, should be more about sanding a pro board than speed for us.

Greg you could ring the rep and if close he will probably come to your house and let you try one.

The other machine to look at would be the Bosch GEX150 Turbo Professional if they have different desity pads.

Hello petec I (we/swaylocks) would be very interested in knowing what the ‘dust catcher attachment’ you use is.  I tried a dust buddy after it was talked about on sways a few years ago but it does not fit 8’’ pads and quite annoying to use so gave that up.