anyone have this Festool linear profile sander?

[Martin Wasner]

Just wondering if you ever got one of these JR?

A regular scoop is a cakewalk with a regular da. Everything else that needs to be done by hand, nightmare. The reviews are few and far between, and very mixed.

[Van Huskey]

Wouldn't something like this be a good choice for commercial quantity work?

[mreza Salav]

Van, I bought one of them to sand all the (maple) trim for our house (5000lf) and it was a piece of junk! No it doesn't work as advertised (at least not on maple).

[Van Huskey]

Van, I bought one of them to sand all the (maple) trim for our house (5000lf) and it was a piece of junk! No it doesn't work as advertised (at least not on maple).

Huh, I am surprised as it seems like a simple tool, hard to get wrong. Large sanding mops generally work great for this sort of work but might break edges one doesn't want broken. There is always a brush sander with a flatter head like the Supermax but it is in a whole different cost arena, think 20+ times as much.

BTW what was the issue?

[Brad Shipton]

I have the same kit as Mo is talking about. Glad I never took the time to put it together.

Bondo is a good material to make profiled sanding blocks.

I have the Festool linear sander. I have only used it a little but the few times I did it seemed kind of slooow.

[Leo Graywacz]

Sanding profiles by machine is usually a compromise between fast and good. The faster you get it done, the more damage you'll cause to the profile. Doing it by hand is the best way to get the profile to remain, but usually it's the slowest way to do it.

I have a brush profile sander head that I stuck on a motor and use a power feeder. It works OK. It's certainly faster than doing it by hand. But some profiles are harder to get all the sanding done. The harder the wood, the longer it's going to take. The longer it takes, the more you are going to take off sharp edges.

[mreza Salav]

Van, it doesn't sand where you want it, it sands everywhere. So the flat surfaces are still rough and the sharp edges get damaged. I suppose it's worse for hard woods like Maple. The end result was I hand sanded everything. (not to mention the cloud of dust it creates!)

[Mel Fulks]

For that type of stuff I would use only premium steel like T-1 to make, then remove flaws mostly with shaped scrapers. Make the biggest panels first and savagely cut any down to smaller panels that would need too much work. Would not use any flaw finding oil stain. I'm sure you already know that some otherwise good employees can not stand much repetition of work or anything that requires decisions.

[J.R. Rutter]

Just wondering if you ever got one of these JR?

A regular scoop is a cakewalk with a regular da. Everything else that needs to be done by hand, nightmare. The reviews are few and far between, and very mixed.

No, I have not found anything better than a RO sander with soft sponge pad and 220 or 180 H&L discs. The custom molded sanding heads for shaper spindles like Voorwood and Unique use work, but you still have cross-grain scratches.

The key for me is still sharp tooling and limited sanding. It takes maybe 20 seconds per edge on a good sized door to get the profiles. Just a little hard on the wrist. I do have a 3 ft long swing arm mounted above the sanding table that holds the vacuum hose, air line, and a bungee to hold the sander at the right height to take most of the weight off.

[Martin Wasner]

No, I have not found anything better than a RO sander with soft sponge pad and 220 or 180 H&L discs. The custom molded sanding heads for shaper spindles like Voorwood and Unique use work, but you still have cross-grain scratches.

The key for me is still sharp tooling and limited sanding. It takes maybe 20 seconds per edge on a good sized door to get the profiles. Just a little hard on the wrist. I do have a 3 ft long swing arm mounted above the sanding table that holds the vacuum hose, air line, and a bungee to hold the sander at the right height to take most of the weight off.

That's pretty much exactly what I'm doing. Minus the contraption to hold the sander. I've got a good shaper, really good insert head with sharp knives, but when you've got a stack of almost 100 doors and another 60 drawer fronts you know there's a few hours of straight up misery in your future.

My experience with shape and sand machines is the sanding head just masks the crap cut.

[J.R. Rutter]

That's when I have a college kid come in for a few hours to run the shaper and do the sanding. $50 -> done.

[Martin Wasner]

You do way more doors than I do. I consider you THE local expert on cabinet door building.