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Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So, there are a few areas where sanding will go wonky on you. The first is you have shitty sandpaper that wears out too quickly. I recommend sticking with 3M sandpaper. The second is that the sandpaper clogs up. All those palm sanders have a slight suction effect, but attaching them to a dust extractor will have you humming along effortlessly for hours if need be. And with the specific type you linked, that has more of a vibration mechanism than a scraping mechanism, I find I have to move them just to get the dust out from under them. I use them as a last resort when they are the only tool that fits into the space.

And if you are removing a lot of paint, I'd recommend a scraper first, as I've found paint gums up sandpaper even faster than normal.

But I'm a relative layman.

Yeah it didn't have a sucker and the paper was generic. I think the paint or lacquer was extremely tough, or maybe you’re not supposed to get all the way down to just the wood? Anyway, once I treated the entire machine as if it was just inert sandpaper and used massive amounts of down and side force, it worked okay.

Yeah, if it were me, I'd have used some sort of solvent to remove the paint or lacquer. My wife actually used this orange based paint stripping stuff to take the paint off all the countertops in the kitchen. Worked amazing, and it took zero effort with a paint scrapper to remove the resulting goo.

Depending on the finish, a cabinet scraper can be magical, if you don't like solvents.

Not sure it would work for stairs due to access issues, but it's great for stuff like tables or gunstocks.