Anyone Use a Pneumatic Sander?

[Glenn Samuels]

This is similar to another thread that did not get much traction. I am looking for a 6" Sander that can give me an aggressive sand coming out of my planer. I sometimes run into tear out and would like to sand it out as easily as possible. Then I will continue to hand sand.

Thoughts on electric vs pneumatic would be appreciated.

[Mel Fulks]

I'm more used to pneumatic . For your purpose I think the most important thing might be to get one with a large orbit.
some brands are available in three orbit sizes , I notice that doesn't get mentioned much in the ads.

[Glenn Samuels]

Hi Mel,

I need it primarily when wood comes off the planer. I have been finding tearout and want to clean it up quickly before going to hand sanding. I see that Dynabrade has a 3/8" which they say is for aggressive sanding and a 3/16" for general sanding. For a quick cleanup, which would you recommend?

[Mel Fulks]

For tearout on hard wood I would want the 3/8. But if you don't want to scrape and sand the scratches if leaves you might need a finer one also. Or belt sand first then use a smaller orbit sander.

[johnny means]

The most important question is," How big is your compressor?". If your going to hand sand anyway, why not use a card scraper for this? It's actually faster.

[Peter Quinn]

Taking out major surface imperfections with an orbital sander is dicey. And time consuming. If you get tearout around grain switchbacks and knots but not everywhere, and you focus on those areas, you end up with valleys that you can feel with your hands and see post finishing. So three are degrees of damage to consider. An orbital sander is not great at leveling a wide area, a pneumatic will cut aggressively and eliminate the immediate surface defects, but at great risk of creating a worse one. Ditto the card scraper suggestion, or a scraper plane or cabinet scraper. Much faster than an orbital once you figure out how to hone the burr. Or Mels idea for belt sander, like a hand held wide belt, you need to level a long wide area to properly fix the problem.

[Glenn Samuels]

Peter, Thanks for your input. I actually forgot about the card scraper. I went to Roy Underhill's shop and saw how to put the burr on an edge. I think that I will give it a shot.