I borrowed a finish sander from my shaper to restore some antique chairs. I never knew this tool was useful for boards until I saw it over at his house. These are excellent for ding repairs!
You can get an OK sander (Black&Decker) for about $30; a good one (PC, DeWalt) for $50 or this masterpiece for around $85. A Porter-Cable Speed-Bloc 330. The best quarter-sheet sander around.
These are built to last and your hand won’t go numb feathering in your next ding/gloss work.
I like my DeWalt Palm, with round pad and stick’ons.
Still gotta get my Milwaulkee saw saw switch replaced! THAT’s a fast carver!
That sander design hasn’t changed for over 30 years. My dad had one that he sold at a garage sale in 1975,and it was old then. It’s a good design, and Porter Cable is almost always at the top of the heap when Fine Woodworking Magazine does a review of power tools. They pull them apart to examine the guts. PC uses heavy duty parts for long life. It’s a good choice.
My current favorite palm sander is a Bosch random orbit. With light pressure it spins like a disk sander, and when you press down, it goes into random orbit. Great for repairs. Doug
I have one that’s 15 years old and is still strong.My neighbor has this ratty looking Chihwauwa Dog that shakes like a leaf all of the time.He is feels like vibrator sander when you grab him so I’m thinking of gluing some 60 grit to his feet and giving him a try.Sucker bites like hell though.We are drinking today. RB
That should make some interesting concaves.
I have the PC, they are solid. I also have an older Ryobi random hook and loop that is very good. It is an older model. A lot of their stuff made lately seems to be of poor quality. I just sanded an oak entry and dining area floor in a house with it this morning. McDing
I bought one of those at least 10 years ago…
Use it constantly…
Abuse it regularly…
It’s been kicked, dropped, soaked…
It works as good as the day I bought it…
The BOMB…
I have maybe 6, or 7 ¼ sheet sanders and the Bosh and Dewalt are the one’s I use the most. I have converted all of them w/ round pads that have hook and loop (Velcro) sandpaper. The round pads are stiffer and can get very close to an edge w/o bumping into a corner. The ¼ sheet sander w/ the felt pads don’t sand as well as the hard rubber, round pads. Conversion kits are about $15.00
Yo epac.I bought a porter cable random orbit sander with the rubber pad but not hook and loop.I use the peel and stick discs from the auto paint supplier or cut my own discs and glue them on just like a feathering pad.The hook and loop paper is expensive and limited in grit choice. RB
I just went down to the shop and realized I had misspoken. The hook and loop are 5” palm sanders but the ¼ sheet sanders have 6”round pads that have stick on paper. It’s all a blur.
I’ve been using a Makita BO5021K for ding repairs. It’s a 5" variable speed random orbital sander with a 8 hole hook and loop pad. Aside from the variable speed being really handy, I like how the speed control, trigger, and trigger lock are all laid out. I don’t even have to take my hand off the tool to work them. It’s nice and light, the way the handles are set up gives me a lot more control over the tool than I have with a palm sander, and it’s been dead reliable. The only thing I’ve had to do is replace the hook and loop pad at the end of the second year, and that’s because I tend to use the edge of the pad a lot, which is kind of hard on it. I wore out the hooks, and paper stopped sticking to it. It seems like the dust collection bag is mostly for looks, but that’s okay. I have a broom and a vacuum. 
If I had it to do over again, I’d buy this exact sander again.
Paul
Went to Woodcraft yesterday to look at the porter cable 330 since they we’re the only shop carrying them.
The owner said the only way to go way with stuff from a german company called FESTOOLS.
He demo’d a combo grinder/orbital sander on epoxy from a koa table glueup cut it like butter with no dust.
At $400 for the tool and $500 for the integrated dust collection machine. It seems like it’s for other things than surfboards. But the sanding performance, lightweight, and no dust was eyecatching. 10x lighter than a Milwaukee.
Ever heard of the guys?
Is it really an industrial machine or just BS.
The owner is a retired finish carpenter
I can only say that I’ve had a Porter Cable #330 for as long as Paul has with much the same use and abuse, and it has held up very nicely. If I had to have just one sander for everything I do, that would be it. A 7"-9" variable speed sander/grinder/polisher might be more versatile for purely surfboard work, a 5" random orbit better for most ding work, but if I had to add in woodworking, refinishing and so on, the little quarter sheet guy gets my vote.
There are other quarter sheet sanders out there, notably the Milwaukees and Makitas, but look at where your hand goes and where the cooling air to the motor is theoreticly drawn in. That’s right, your hand blocks the air, and my guess is that it will overheat right ricky tick. The 330 doesn’t even get warm even after all-day use.
Plus, I am not crazy about how the palm down hand position works on a finish sander - you tend to push too hard, clogs the paper and tends to overheat things. When you hold the 330 properly ( see below ) it just floats along and does a very nice job. I like 100 grit for most things, though coarser paper is useful for coarser work, of course…
A Speed Bloc tip : the little metal gizmo they sell with it for use in changing paper always seems to go missing after a while. However, the little paint can opener/church key gizmos that paint stores give away works just fine, can be taped to your cord and besides which it’s real nice for opening a cold one after work.
hope that’s of use
doc…
Hey Doc - Welcome back! Where ya been?
domestic bliss. followed by domestic chaos, followed by domestic bliss. Life is a carnival, and I am smack in the middle of the freak show at times.
3 or 4 new careers opening up, all at once, holidaze, stepkids, exes, getting lost on US 175, US 275, US any-damn-thing-with-a-75-in-it in downpour rain and just keeping on going and approaching from the south instead of the north… illness, vertigo, assorted and sundry arm and back braces.
ya might say I’ve been busy…
doc…
A Speed Bloc tip : the little metal gizmo they sell with it for use in changing paper always seems to go missing after a while. However, the little paint can opener/church key gizmos that paint stores give away works just fine, can be taped to your cord and besides which it’s real nice for opening a cold one after work.
That’s too funny…
My replacement paper tab opener thing is exactly the same…
The original went out within 6 month…
The can opener’s been in use since…
I’ve got one too. I use it for wet sanding as much as anything else when doing ding work. The tool I use is the tang on my 8" half round bastard file cause the two tools are almost always laying close to one another.
The tool is exactly the right weight to work with. The paper grit does all the work all you have to do is move it around. I first discovered the tool’s value and toughness working on boats about 30 years ago.
Mahalo, Rich
P.S. Thank God for the sunshine – two whole days of it in the past four.
Yep, that’s the handiest little gizmo - the one in the pic actually lives on my fridge magnet and gets used for opening cold ones most of the time rather than dedicated work with the sander. The bottle opener in the workshop is yet another salvage item, wall mounted. These days, after-work is at least as important as the work itself.
Never used the little Speed Bloc for wet sanding, even though it’s as well double-insulated a tool as I own. Instead, I snagged a little 1/8 sheet air-powered jitterbug sander…which is next to useless… and one of those rotary or random-orbit air powered deals with the 6" foam disc on it. Then I said to blazes with it and I just wet sand by hand these days.
Had a Black and Decker quarter sheet sander for a while, it was too light and the punched-paper arrangement for dust collection didn’t do an especially good job either. When it burned out ( about six months) I was happy to have a reason to get the Porter Cable. Though I still run across the paper-punching jig for the thing, it outlasted the tool it came with and I haven’t chucked it like I should.
Then, being an idiot, I went and bought myself a boat, a wooden sailboat. Nice older craft, but the previous owner had sanded it with a small-ish disc sander, probably a Makita from the chew marks. Over the next few years I intend to pretty it up, gussy it up some, including getting t he paintwork ‘right’. And that ( as does most everything else in life - ask my ladyfriend about that ) called for a new tool. In this case, a half-sheet sander.
I wanted one of the Porter Cable 505s, but new the price is ( I think) excessive and used they are hard to find. So I looked around and scored one of the Milwaukees ( used, needed a cord) , one that came with a sanding shroud and a dust bag and it seems to work okay. The built in dust collection is a joke, but that’s pretty much normal, I have yet to see one of those setups that really works. Does a nice job on larger flat surfaces, the tool weight ( like the Speed Bloc ) alone is sufficient to keep the paper on the job and I think I’m happy with it.
Ah - life improves. For more fun, looks like I am going to have a winter workshop, 2000 miles from the original one here. And thinking about equipping it, with my backups from here and a few new acquisitions, for boat work, house and cabinet and furniture work, steel and aluminum fabrication, all sorts of repairs and a little board work besides…that is a kinda fun mental project for the time being.
Life is a carnival…
doc…
What’s the diff between an orbital sander and a finishing sander??
I also noticed that 1/4 sheet sanders are around $20, 1/2 sheet sanders $150 and 1/3 sheet sanders about $25! I’d think boards under 6’ wouldn’t need a half sheet. But boards 9’+ would.
Of course, for gloss coat sanding, I’d need a waterproof sander. A Hutchins Waterbug is $272! But do I need waterproof? For 3/16" fine sanding, wouldn’t regular be fine? A Universal Jitterbug is $115.