Powered Profile Sander for Molding

[Andrew More]

Is there such a thing available for retail?

My main problem is attempting to sand down pine molding in a 100 year old house. I'd like to find a solution that does this as efficiently as possible, perhaps with a powered tool.

So this is what I'm seeing available:

1) Festool LS 140, which has a custom molding kit. I don't want to get into a discussion about Festool, for me $500+ seems a bit high. YMMV
2) Hand profile sanding. Either the custom profiles available from Woodcraft (https://www.woodcraft.com/products/woodriver-8-piece-complete-sanding-pad-set) or else something shop made. Either way I'm looking at hand sanding a house's worth of trim which isn't appealing, but at least is possible.
3) Used Porter Cable profile sander (https://www.ebay.com/p/665891486?iid=285035571248) on Ebay. There seem to be a lot of these, but no other company seems to make them now, other than festool, I don't know why. I generally don't like to buy cheap used power tools, since they're often in bad shape, particularly over the internet.

Right now I'm leaning towards option 3 as the best of a set of bad choices. Does anybody have experience with the Porter Cable sander? Is there a reason why there are few options?

[Andrew More]

Oh, option 4 - try to make something myself, starting with a cheap 1/2 or 1/4 sheet sander and a DIY attachment, ala the Festool LS 140.

[Paul F Franklin]

my fein oscillating multi-tool came with profile sanding attachments. Haven't used them much, if at all, so can't say how well they work....

If you happen to have a drum sander, you might be able to get a brush sander head for it....pretty sure that's how the millwork places do it.

[Dave Sabo]

What $ do you value your time at ? $500 doesn’t buy very much of mine, and hand sanding a room’s worth of molding would be very costly because I’d want 2-3x my normal rate as well as be slow.


The ls140is the perfect tool for this. Not good for much else though.

This type sander is also pretty good for moldings (with the right abrasives) and is more versatile :
https://surfprepsanding.com/product/3x4-electric-ray-sanders/

Look into SP’s sponge abrasives for molding work.

PC444 is a clever idea not well executed. And like most early PC sanders is a vibration monster.

Fein / other multi tools with a profile kit are marginally better b/o less vibration and more power ; but still not efficient enough for a room’s worth of molding.

Bottom line is , match the tool to the job.

[Ed Aumiller]

Can you strip it of current finish before sanding???

[Mel Fulks]

Andrew, are you going to paint or stain? Free advice: I would paint. The pine moulding was most likely always painted. Probably lead paint
on bottom .

[Cameron Wood]

Are you cleaning up for repaint? Stripping to stain? What are the profiles like?

How much paint? Latex over oil/lead? How much caulking? What about the doors/windows?

In general minimize sanding. Grind/file scraper blade to fit the moulding profile is a possibility, as well as shaping sanding blocks.

[Andrew More]

Some good questions here guys. This is pine molding that has been stained in the past, and I'd like to continue to do that. Despite suggestions that it was painted, I do not believe that that was the case. The trim itself is in okay condition, it just needs some clean up of paint splatter, over paint, and other nastiness. Unknown what type of paint it might be, I'm guessing oil based, just from the age, and it doesn't respond to acetone.

As for the profile I'm mostly thinking about the baseboards which are a roman ogee with a V groove under it. There's also a large flat section, but a conventional sander will handle it. For a variety of reasons I'd like to accomplish this without removing it from the walls.

The Fein tool is a very good suggestion, I've got a DeWalt oscillator which I'd like to use, but I might be willing to buy a Fein tool, corded, at $200 for this job. A molding cabinet scraper might also be a good alternative.

[Greg Quenneville]

You can buy the Fein profile attachment and an adapter for your DeWalt. I have it, and it is a pain to load paper, the paper loads up quickly, there is no dust extraction, and you can only do one part of the profile at a time.

I also have the Festool LS 140 which I bought cheap cheap years ago. It is really suited to big profiles like handrails, not typical trim mouldings.

I had to sand hundreds of feet of new mouldings for the house, often twice, and there was no mechanised solution that I could find.

[Edward Weber]

I'll throw in my two cents,
https://stockroomsupply.com/products/moulding-master-12-fully-enclosed-trim-moulding-sander
A small machine like this would speed things up considerably. Depending on how many feet you need to do.
IMHO, the price quickly outweighs the time saved, and you'll have it for the next job.
If anyone has looked at the price of moulding lately, it's absolutely nuts. Even with the purchase of a machine, it's probably cheaper than buying new.

[Warren Lake]

Nitto make a straight line sander and have a stick on block that you can shape to whatever.

It might work for what you are doing, no idea no photo we can only guess.