Upgrade 5" Ridgid sander to Mirka/SurfacePrep Worth It? Chair/Board Building

[Patrick Irish]

I'm piecing together tools I need for a rocking chair build (Hal Taylor plans) I'm going to start and hopefully finish before the baby gets here.

I have a 5" Ridgid ROS and lots of abrasive pads for it.

I'm not sure I need to upgrade but thinking about it. I know when finish sanding endgrain cutting boards it takes forever with my Ridgid and it takes a long time to wind down, I think something is wrong with it. It works though.

I was looking at the 5" festool rotex, Mirka deros, and Surface prep all in 5". Any thinking that a sander like this NOT needed for sculpting a rocking chair? Lots of the sculpting will be done with an angle grinder I know that.

Thanks!

[David Utterback]

Just finished (final?) sanding of chair parts a few minutes ago with the Rotex 125 using Mirka abrasives. It is attached to Fein turbo II. The setup performed well. The Mirka abrasives are so easy to change, that multiple sanders with different grips is no longer much of a time saver. It will be my go to system until sanding of wooden furniture pieces is no longer needed for high quality results. Just dreaming ....

[Mark Bolton]

I would go with The Surfprep or an AirVantage before I would go with the Deros or Festool myself. We have Mirka Ceros in the shop and the small envelope and speed of sanding, user fatigue, is of no comparison. I was bummed when Mirka dropped the Ceros for the larger Deros with the on-board transformer and know some like them but we were one of the lucky ones have have Ceros' running strong for several years no without a hiccup. I just put probably the 10th new pad on one of the 5" sanders yesterday.

The dynabrade envelope in an electric with central vac is a no brainer. Your wrists and your ears will thank you.

P.S.... If you need a sander for aggressive hogging and finish work to compare to the Rotex go with the bosch dual mode which you can pull from CPO for peanuts compared to the Rotex. Great sander

[Patrick Irish]

The 5" AirVantage is about $150 less than the Surfprep and look identical.

It's on amazon for $365 but only the 3/32" orbit. Is that better than the more aggressive 3/16" orbit?