looks like a nice tool… the real advantage of the festool is that it switches from circular to orbital…
Hey its so good that all us grown men can get excited about new powertools…
No, seriously, I get excited about em’… The simple pleasure of comparing a new Dropsaw, Makita versus Metabo?
Bunnings…tool porn!
Bought a welder the other day, nearly had an orgasm!
Yours is a nice tool Benny… Have’nt seen one of those in Oz yet , but I have burnt out everything but Festo… so let us know if yours will handle a long-term thrashing.
Josh
tool porn…
LOL!!!
FWOOOR!
Hot…
Josh
Thanks for the reply benny,
I haven’t had too much trouble with heating up the epoxy, but would like to try a new sander…
Am in a similar situash witht he noise/dust as rent a terraced house with neighbors and lanlords( and a wife) so minimizing either would be a plus.
Think you could sand/polish an entire board with it in reasonable time? - providing the hot/gloss coats are good too that is 
thanks
Quote:
Benny because we like you please wear the mask as a precaution, ya never know, that hose could get yanked out.
Yeah, if it yanks out it could suck you up…and then where’d ya be hot shot, BENNY BOY. SAFETY IS NO JOKE!! So lets review: 1) mask for dust, obvious reason…especially when you have a killer dust collection system, and your outside. 2) Eye protection for flying shards of glass. 3) No loose fitting cloth, no ties, Hate to see you get sucked into the randomness of the orbit 4) Safety boots, you could drop the sander on your toe, a broken toe and your out for 6 weeks, no surf. 5) Helmet, you could acidently it yourself in the head with the sander. I’ve done it, did it 4 times last week, remember:Helmet’s save lives. 6) Leather gloves, these are good, you never know when you could sand a knuckle down during a meth rage. Some times I wear 3 pairs…better safe than sorry. I wear 3 condoms too.
Howzit jip, The Bosch model does the same. A new Bosch runs $300, don’t know what the Festool runs, but They can’t be cheap.Aloha,Kokua
Hi Jay -
In addition to my steel-toed safety boots, mask, helmet, safety goggles and 5mm wetsuit with pre-lubed receptacle hood, I always wear 3 condoms and 3 pairs of rubber gloves. If nothing else, I’m protected from myself.
haven’t seen that one yet. i’ll check it out. bosh makes darn nice tools. i like my old bosch jigsaw much better then my festool jig…
http://bosch.cpotools.com/reconditioned_tools/sanders/all_sanders/1250devs-rt.html
I have this one and it rules; stock variety of hardness pads available at time of purchase from manufacturer. Done a bevvie of boards and a host of housework with it and it’s still going strong. Warranty; certified. Dual action mode works great. Dust collection system is fantastic with a decent (3HP) shopvac.
trust me, at 189$ for a certified, factory reconditioned tool, you’re laughing. The only bummer is; no case; their planers come with a case…
but not to take anything away from ya Benny; good ROS with dust collection is a must for a clean and efficient workspace. Good stuff.
Nativeson, I’m sure it would do a whole board in good time. I used it today to fix 2 deep dings on 2 different boards (into the foam) and a deck delam (from knee paddling) on a third - all in the time it took for me to listen to the Raiders (American Football) lose their game to Detroit. About 3.25 hours.
And that was using the tool to sand out all 3 areas - one really large - with an 80 grit pad. Then lay in enough layers of 4 oz (with UV poly) to fill the areas. Sand that down to the surrounding gloss to leave room for the new hotcoats (Same 80 grit pad). Lay in hotcoats. Sand/fair all 3 again (still on the same pad - man, that dust collection is working well 
). Then switch to a 150 grit pad, then a 220 on each repair.
After that it was hand - giong through 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, #3 cutting compound, #2 polishing, and 1# clean & shine…
But I got 3 dynamite repairs done while listening to a game, didn’t make a mess in my shop, didn’t wear out my hands & arms, didn’t have to re-do any sand-throughs, and made some money while enjoying football and having a couple beers.
To my mind, that tool just paid for itself today…
GWN, just read Benny’s post above. Can this type of sander replace a standard Milwaukee?
I have a little 5-inch job (on your recommendation) and it is too slow to sand a whole board. thx
i knock the hotcoat off my boards with my metabo 6" with 80 grit takes about 15 mins per side on a 9 foot board, then i use the big sander and go through the grits.
when i started out making board i did it all with this sander, but that takes time!!
have now done over 300 boards like this
hey nativeson, if your ever near manchester drop me a maail, i have a good setup of festool and you can come have a play to see if you like it. sucks up all the dust and much quieter and less stressful on the limbs than anything else ive tried!
festool rocks…
15 min per side isn’t bad. I’ll give it a try.
GWN, didn’t mean to sound like I was blaming you for anything. I like the little 5 inch sander. I just need more speed. My Milwaukee is a beast.
Hey Greg,
No worries. In dual action mode, the sander strips anything pretty damn quick, even with 220 grit on there, as long as your sanding pads are of decent quality. As quick as a rotary sander? Probably not. A little easier to operate and lower likelihood of a screw-up due to operator error/inexperience? Hell yeah. I usually start @60 grit with dual action to knock down anything that’s really proud, and then go to random orbital mode to go through my grits, keeping the speed low initially and then ramping it up as I get to the surface I want for a given grit.
It actually doesn’t fair that badly with a polishing mop either. Again; as good as a rotary? Probably not…but I’m not much of a craftsman, so having a larger margin of error is pretty clutch for me ;). I bet you’d have found the 6" to be alot more powerful than your 5" though…time to upgrade?
The only thing I could say that detracts from this kind of sander versus a rotary (besides ultimate speed; again, not a concern for me) is that you do need to develop a bit of a touch in order to get really crisp rail lines; has a tendency to soften them if you’re not careful. Same goes for a rotary, but my experience with those seemed to indicate it was easier to get that crisp tucked rail with out as much attention, possibly because of the size of the pad. I usually just sand out the rails with a big foam backer on the tool to knock down any high spots and then finish up by hand; rails are easy that way and there’s something about the contour running through your hand that is rewarding after going through the shaping/glassing process…
End of story is I’d rather spend an extra 15 minutes sanding rather than an extra hour vacuuming and cleaing up dust. Like Benny said; more time for beer ;).
Cheers,
G
Howzit GWN, $189 is a good price since Bosch offers the same reburbished one for $199 but they won’t ship to Hawaii. When they informed of this that is when I went with the Rigid model. One relly good thing about the Bosch is I have used them for blending a new gloss ( repair job ) into the old gloss with no sand throughs of the old gloss. Aloha,Kokua
Benny, great looking tool. Thanks for the heads up.
So be people think about the bosch refurb at $189 vs the rigid new at $129?
Ready to upgrade my harbor freight 7" and maybe save it as a polisher now.
Howzit 4est, The difference between the 2 is the Rigid is just a random while the Bosch is a random and a circular sander. Aloha,Kokua
After seeing the first post on this, I convinced my bride that I found just the sander to refinish our 50" oak kitchen table (I didn’t mention the ding repairs… but I’m pretty sure she figured that out herself). Anyway, as advertised at Home Depot, $129 got me the Rigid. I used it on the table yesterday and it did a great job stripping off 30 years of crap and polyurethane. Started with 60 grit and worked my way to 220. Perfect, no swirlies, no funny little circle patterns, just very smooth oak.I was even able to turn the rounded edges easily. The best part is the almost complete lack of dust! Nice tool. My bride is happy and I’ll have it on ding duty next week.