you get it. dont be sidetracked by to much tooling
From my experience alot of the sydney factories (Channel Island, Simon Anderson, Rusty, Chilli, Misfit, Panda etc) are using Festools for an orbital finish. We use the ones pictured below in conjunction with a normal grinder to remove the swirl marks from the spinning disc. You can buy soft pads for them too which can blend the deck, concaves and rails nice.
i used one for cleaning laps and sanding rails.
Huie, your talk of no sanding out of the bag has me jealous! i cant get there yet! trying though!
zac, are they sanding them regularly first then just using orbitals for finish, or doing all the sanding on the festool. I’d imagine the orbital would be pretty slow for bulk sanding ?
Powerfull roto-orbital sander, in roto forced mode with high orbital are as fast as roto sanders. Then disconnect roto forced for finish grits.
“Was thinking about getting a random orbital and an auto switch for the shop vac.”
shop vacs are freaking noisy get a regular 1.5-3 HP dust collection setup with miniturbine for a 30 gallon instead
the porter cable finish sanders are the workhorse of the autodetailing industry and finish carpenters they last a life time and are pretty much vibration free.
bad hand sanders can lead to carpa tunnel syndrome.
I’d go with a quiet 1/4 hand sander with lots of vent holes and use mirca screens at low speed.
did this with a cheap rigid handsander from homedepot and a vacuum and it worked wonders especially on PU. Epoxy is a little harder and that were the rotex comes handy. I use the rotex with the mirca backing plate and mirca screens. Festool. Bosch and Fein make some good but really expensive tools.
Body shop pros use compressor powered sanders, but bondo filler is way easier to sand than resin or epoxy.
in the end
hand sanding something is always the best, if you aren’t pressed for time
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No truer words…
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Festools go on the fly from rotary to random orbit with a flick of a switch. Downside it only has a 6" pad. Upside it has three densities of foam pads that change in a flash.
The selection of surfboard-appropriate sandpaper is off the hook. If you use the quality epoxy resins (green room) you will use half the sand paper you normally use. For the back yarder the festool is the ultimate sander with the festool vaccum attachment. I have a reuseable collection bag and empty it once a week with 4-5 gallons of dust.
No offense to Huie, but my wailua full on shaping,glassing,sanding operation days were way more expensive than a festool set up. My sanding room fan/dust collection/wiring/ framining, cost about $1400 in year 2000 (did everything myself). My VOC management in the glassing room cost about $1600. Not to mention these separate rooms were dedicated to glassing and sanding only.
A backyarder with limited space will benefit from a festool. I have a makita sander and it would be a weapon of mass decstruction in the hands of a newb. A festool can be used by a novice and the ability to make proficient use of it can be acheived quickly. Unless you have actually used one you don’t know. There is nothing to compare it to. Dust collection it is a 9/10 and fuctionality 8/10. Makita dust collection -4/10 (negative 4 out of ten) and functionality 8/10. Regarding noise, the makita is farking waaaaaay noisier than the festool. Both systems need hearing protection. Changing sand paper makita -7/10 and festool is an 11/10.
Makita is a 2 hands only tool and if my dick had fingers it would be helping also. Festool can be used one handed with practice for rail work. I love my makita and it has its application. But in my book the festool is the winner hands down for a small timer making 200 or less boards per year. If you have a dedicated sanding room with dust collection ventilation then the festool would be a luxury and not a neccesity. I sand finish my boards with the 1000 grit soft foam pad on random orbit with the festool. I use epoxy only and have never used polyester resin since owning my festool. Festool has a comparable rpm adjustment to the makita. below examples of 1000 grit finish.
hey pirate we do the bulk with the grinder and just use the festool to give a swirless finish. We grind all our laps etc with the grinder too. As BB said you can flick the switch on the festool and it will spin without the random osciallation, but i find it harder to control on that setting than the normal makita grinder.
…
Cracked me up while reading this am, literally laughed out loud.
Love the wit bb30…
[quote=“$1”]
. No offense to Huie, but my wailua full on shaping,glassing,sanding operation days were way more expensive than a festool set up. My sanding room fan/dust collection/wiring/ framining, cost about $1400 in year 2000(did everything myself). My VOC management in the glassing room cost about $1600. Not to mention these seperate rooms were dedicated to glassing and sanding only.
HUH’’ whats that got to do with offending me? speed dials on sanders is a step backwards and is not my interpretation off on the fly.
**after 50 odd years of sanding polishing
i will stand by my claim
sander polishers have not been made user frendly for surfboard manafacture for a very long time
maybe most commenting on here have not been around surfboard construction long enough to know?**
**it is not clear as to why we need this over priced robotic crap
are we using it for sanding polyester hot coats for glossing?**
are we using it for wet sanding polyester for polishing?
are we using it for polishing polyester gloss ?
OR are we stumbling around trying to acheive the above on epoxy?
**2 --or are we using it on the modern wet sanded finishes on std shortboard construction
makita hitachi and the others second rate crap usefull for repairs
and in saying that i can understand you using the robot
but this old fella is past change for that purpose
cheers huie**
if you don’t have anything to contribute to the original intent of the thread just go away.
have you ever heard of difference of opinion?
maybe the authoritys need to be looking closer at you backyarders
In case you missed it the point of this thread was not a discussion of which type is better. I’ve got two traditional sanders for sanding boards. I’m pretty good with them. Unfortunately there is no means to control the dust. I’m after an alternative that I can attach of a hose to control the dust. You just seem more interested in having a dick slinging sword fight with others. Am I reading your posts wrong?
How do you get an entry level job in a surfboard factory