Best orbital sander? (I’ve got 11 bottoms to paint!)
- Thread starter SV_IdleHour
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We are very satified with our Porter Cable sanders
Any of the big box name brands, DeWalt, Porter Cable, Ryobi, and so on. Avoid Harbor Freight if you are going to spend a lot of time sanding. Cheaper sanders will be noisier and have more vibration.
Something that can attach to a shopvac if you are sanding bottom paint.
I had several layers of old flaky bottom paint. i found it faster to scrape it with a 4" razor scraper then sand. i am just sanding with 60 grit on a Wal-Mart special $20 orbital.
I had 3 hours a 4 blades invested in the scraping. The sanding took about an hour and a half to do one side of a 26ft boat minus the keel. I have to take the keel bunks off before I get to that. You can see the end result in this picture from when I was working on it before the iceage moved in.
Attachments
I went with Porter Cable because it attaches directly without need of adapters to my small Shop-Vac. No regrets.
I have a Bosch Orbital Sander purchased from Lowes.
It has a vacuum hose connection that sucks most of the dust to a vacuum with a HEPA filter Bag.
Bottom jobs need to have some grain sanded into the existing paint so that the fresh paint will adhere. It does this either chemically of physically. You need to create a roughed surface for a physical bond.
I have used 80 grit sand paper. It is a job but it can be done. You have to throw the paper away constantly to keep it fresh and still working. You want to suck up as much of the dust you create as possible.
That is where a "sanding disk" on an orbital sander comes into play. Not just any disk. I saw this "Screen" on a youtube video of a guy in Europe, Sweden I think, sanding his fiberglass project with a sanding screen. They were lasting him much longer then the sanding disks do on my sander.
Here is the product. Mirka 9A-241-080 6-Inch 80 Grit Mesh Abrasive Dust Free Sanding Discs, Box of 50 Discs They are available from Amazon.
I plan on giving them a try on my next project. They may be helpful to you.
It has a vacuum hose connection that sucks most of the dust to a vacuum with a HEPA filter Bag.
Bottom jobs need to have some grain sanded into the existing paint so that the fresh paint will adhere. It does this either chemically of physically. You need to create a roughed surface for a physical bond.
I have used 80 grit sand paper. It is a job but it can be done. You have to throw the paper away constantly to keep it fresh and still working. You want to suck up as much of the dust you create as possible.
That is where a "sanding disk" on an orbital sander comes into play. Not just any disk. I saw this "Screen" on a youtube video of a guy in Europe, Sweden I think, sanding his fiberglass project with a sanding screen. They were lasting him much longer then the sanding disks do on my sander.
Here is the product. Mirka 9A-241-080 6-Inch 80 Grit Mesh Abrasive Dust Free Sanding Discs, Box of 50 Discs They are available from Amazon.
I plan on giving them a try on my next project. They may be helpful to you.
With 11 bottoms to do I might suggest changing the name of your boat! 
HA!With 11 bottoms to do I might suggest changing the name of your boat!
Picked up a gig for ten this spring, the other one is mine
Yep, a few will need scraping and the rest need to be roughed up for paint. Thanks!
Absolutely. I’ve used them and they’re way better for bottom paint than paper.That is where a "sanding disk" on an orbital sander comes into play. Not just any disk. I saw this "Screen" on a youtube video of a guy in Europe, Sweden I think, sanding his fiberglass project with a sanding screen. They were lasting him much longer then the sanding disks do on my sander.
Here is the product. Mirka 9A-241-080 6-Inch 80 Grit Mesh Abrasive Dust Free Sanding Discs, Box of 50 Discs They are available from Amazon.
I plan on giving them a try on my next project. They may be helpful to you.
If you've really got 11 boats to do, get a orbital sander that runs on compressed air. Much lighter, doesn't overheat, All the pros I used to work near/with used them. Sorry, can't tell you a model anymore. I own the Bosch that @jssailem mentions above. Very nice unit, but if I was doing 11 boats - I'd go get a tool that runs on compressed air.
dj
dj
They use a lot of air so you need a pretty substantial compressor, no toys.
Around here most of the marinas do not permit any sanding. All of them pressure wash the bottom when the boats are hauled. The following Spring has either the yard workers or the boat owners applying paint as needed without sanding. This does work as long as you do not over apply the paint. Annual full painting is not necessary. I apply a new full coat of water based bottom paint about every four years. Other years I just touch up any bare spots (chips) without sanding. Sanding is most harmful to the boat owners. Paper masks will not protect them well enough IMHO. Eleven bottoms to sand and a paper mask will probably shorten your life.
Correct.
One of the guys I used to work with had a van with all his tools including compressor and generator. He was completely autogenous, so to speak.
I recall one job where this couple was re-building a boat on their property that was completely off the grid. It was in the Pyrenees on an old farm. By old, the farmhouse was over 600 years old. Interesting structure, the back of the house is where they kept the animals, and one front portion of the house was where the people lived. By today's standards, one would say they lived in the barn. But it was really a complete ecosystem. The only heat in the house was a huge, basically walk-in fireplace which also served as the kitchen. So in the winter they relied on animal heat from the barn to help keep the house warm. Between the animals and the fireplace it was amazingly comfortable for an uninsulated building. At some point they did a seriously good upgrade by adding in a gravity fed water system so they didn't have to hand pump water for domestic and farm needs. That gravity fed water system was fed off a spring higher up in the mountains and gave them so much head pressure they could actually irrigate their fields. The nearest electricity was probably 5 miles or more away. This place was totally off the grid.
But I digress. Anyway, they had trucked up to their farm this amazing sailboat and were working on getting it all set up to sail around the world. They hired my friend to work on that boat and he was there with his van totally self-sufficient and self-contained. It was a complete workshop with lathe, mill and all the hand tools you could think of. All hand tools were compressed air tools. The lathe and mill just ran directly off the generator. I had just done a sailboat bottom in the port using electric hand tools and my friend hired me to come do the bottom of the boat he was working on. Yeah, OK, I was grunt labor back then. I used his air tools for doing the work and what a difference they make! Light weight, easy to use, can get into hard to reach spaces because there is no electric motor attached to the sander. Hard to put into words just how much easier it is to work with these air tools than electric tools, especially as pretty much all the work is overhead.
Yes, it's an investment but if 11 hulls were staring at me to do - I think I'd take the plunge...
dj