Using an Orbital Sander When your project doesn't call for heavy-duty equipment, such as a drum sander, you may want to consider sanding your hardwood floors with an orbital sander.
You should budget your time for your project before your sander hits the floor. A good rule of thumb is that 140 square feet will take you five hours working alone. That means that a 600-square foot-room is a multiday effort.
Orbital Vibrating Floor Sander
This sander works well for all types of solid hardwood flooring, parquet, engineered wood flooring, and even cork and wood composition flooring. This sander can take your wood flooring down to its smoothest finish.
The process for sanding a floor by hand would be, as a general rule, to start on a 40 grit sandpaper and work your way up to 100 or 120 grit paper to leave a fine finish. It is important to keep any sander moving so it does not dig into or burn the floor.
Orbital sanders are best for floors that require a light to medium sanding. If you need to prep a floor for a new top coat of clear finish, an orbital sander is the right machine.
Floor Care Know-How
Staalesen adds, “A drum sander cuts; an orbital grinds." “If your floor is in rough shape, cupped or damaged, or has a very heavy finish, a drum sander is what you need,” he adds. “An orbital won't relevel your floor.”
Random orbital sanders are the best choice for do-it-yourself hardwood floor refinishing. They take longer to remove old finishes than drum sanders, but they do not require a lot of experience to use and are less likely to damage your wood floor.
You want to give the new finish time to harden and cure. We recommend waiting a minimum of 24 hours before you walk on your floors– and 48 hours is even better. Start with socks only and keep pets off the floors for a few days.
The orbital sander is an ideal tool to use when sanding concrete. This will reduce your effort significantly and give a consistent polish to the counter or fixture. The one downside is how they are handheld with relatively small faces. If you are sanding an entire concrete floor, look for something larger.
Sanding jobs can be completed in either three or four passes with different abrasive grits, depending on the condition of the floor being refinished. For old floors, the first pass is to remove the old finish and level the floor. This will be the heaviest sanding and will make heavy scratch marks.
Your floor needs to be sanded in stages with progressively finer abrasives for the best finish. Starting with grit 40, then grit 60 and finally grit 100 is tipically a good procedure for most wood floors. The goal with the first coarse abrasive is to remove the old surface coating and to flatten the surface.
In a nutshell, belt sanders are on the powerful side, able to strip down a piece of wood in a short amount of time. Orbital sanders, on the other hand, are finishing sanders that are used to get wood ultra-smooth.
Anytime you need to sand your hardwood floor down to the base, you will be creating a lot of noise and dust. The amount of dust that makes it into the air and on all of your furniture will largely depend on the machine you are using.
A dustless floor sander works just like other floor sanders except it is designed to suction dust created by the wood floor before it gets into the air to settle on surfaces and be breathed in.
Well, yes. But… It's okay to sand inside given you wear a respirator and have a variety of dust collection mechanisms in place. Connecting a shop vacuum to your sander, sanding on a downdraft table, wet sanding instead of dry sanding, and sealing the room you're working in all reduce the amount of free-flowing sawdust.
What is a random orbital sander used for? A random-orbit sander can sand the socks off your old vibrating sander when you've got to strip paint off furniture, prepare new molding, or clean up between finish coats. It can also smooth and clean metal and composite materials such as solid-surface countertops.
Random orbital sanders are best for sanding large surfaces and smooth larger pieces of wood. Palm sanders, on the other hand, are best for sanding small pieces and are also effective at sanding edges.
This “random” motion results in a smoother finish, without the swirl pattern that can come from standard orbital sanders that only move in a circular motion. Random orbital sanders are extremely efficient for large projects.
However, for some reason, some people still prefer sanding their floors by hand. They swear that sanding the floor by hand will provide you with flawless results. They consider sanding the floor by hand as a true form of craftsmanship, considering how detailed and more complex the whole job is.
Summary. If your house has a lot of hardwood flooring, sanding can be a big job – taking several days to complete properly. Even with good preparation, you should budget each room taking you 1-2 days to complete at the fastest.
WHAT IS EASIEST WAY TO SAND A FLOOR? Use the right tools, use the right grit sandpaper and change it often. Take your time and make sure that the drum of the sander never stays on the spot to avoid sanding grooves into your floor. It's physically hard work but not difficult to do.