Sanding Smooth

New woodworkers often like to celebrate a tool purchase no matter how large or small it might be. Actually, let me correct that statement slightly. ALL woodworkers often like to celebrate a tool purchase no matter how large or small it might be. That feels much more accurate.

In regards to palm sanders, we’ve actually already got a number of them in stock. But our workhorse is an older DeWalt unit that we’ve been using for the better part of 15 years. Over that time it has logged hundreds of hours sanding thousands of cutting boards. All of that work can lead to some issues as you can imagine. We noticed it wasn’t catching as much dust as it used to, it was getting noisier by the minute, and the dust bag actually had holes in it so any dust it did pick up was promptly sent right out into the shop. Not an ideal situation. But this model has performed fantastically for years. We needed to find a new version of the same sander.

And so we did. A quick search shows that DeWalt is still producing the same family of 1/4 sheet sander. No doubt, because they last a LONG time.

I won’t bore you with specs and features. I’ll just tell you what is different and what I like (or don’t like).

First, I really like the new way of installing the sandpaper. It is much easier now to get a nice, snug install, and not have to fiddle with the paper to get it even and taught. This might not sound like something too important but when you’re working on a large project and swapping paper 15+ times this is a big deal.

The dust collection on this model is also impressive. The first project I used it on was a large hard maple glue-up. Under the old conditions, I would have used the air filtration in the shop to keep the dust under control. I didn’t need it at all. In fact, it picked up more off of the surface of the maple than I would have ever expected and kept it in the new dust bag safe and sound. Even brushing the piece off after sanding was complete showed that there was very little left to deal with.

Now for what I don’t like. Not much. The only thing that might be handy would be if you could put a small shop vac directly to the sander itself. It would be useful on larger projects to not have to use the bag at all and let it go immediately into a vacuum system. However, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor inconvenience.

All in all, I would say this would be a great introduction to any woodworker’s arsenal. It’s a fairly inexpensive (Under $55 shipped on Amazon) solution and takes up almost no room at all. It even comes with its own canvas carrying bag.

Check out more details on the DeWalt website.