Why sander choice matters with epoxy
I'm often asked what tools I use in the workshop, and why I picked them. Today I'm covering the sanders and grinders we use — the ones still in service, the ones we've retired, and the ones I wish we could still buy.
We use three main types: sheet sanders (either 1/3 or 1/2 sheet), 150mm random orbit sanders, and belt sanders.
I'm all for cheap, disposable tools where you can get away with it, but sanders aren't one of those places. Sanding cured epoxy is hard on any tool, and when the epoxy is as tough as ours, you need machines that can genuinely cope.
Sheet and belt sanders
My oldest sander is a 1/2 sheet sander made by Wicks DIY, from back when their tools were made by AEG and others. I got it around 1999, and it's given good service — though it's finally starting to show its age, and I'll be looking at a replacement soon.
My oldest belt sander, sadly no longer with us, was a Ryobi Industrial belt sander — powerful, fairly light for its size, and something you could run all day. Ryobi discontinued it because it simply lasted too long and never broke down until it was completely worn out. It's since been replaced with a Makita 9401, a real brute of a machine and very heavy, though it goes through belts within seconds if you don't use genuine-grade belts in the 80 grit range.
Random orbit sanders
We've been through quite a few sanders in this range, from cheap DIY Black & Decker models up to Makita. The Black & Decker only lasted a few uses before it proved too underpowered for the work we needed. We then moved to a DeWalt DW443, which we were told was a top-notch sander that could handle anything we threw at it. To date, it's the one tool that's genuinely disappointed me — the tool that made me write off DeWalt as overpriced and underperforming for our work.
Our two mainstays now are both Makita. The 9227CB, fitted with a 150mm pad, is a real heavy remover of material — so much so that we rarely go finer than 80 grit, normally running 120 grit on it instead.
The other is the Makita BO6040, bought around 2013–14 and in daily use ever since. It's been dropped, banged, abused, and worked hard — we probably should have been taken to court for the abuse — and it's one of the best tools I've ever bought. I'd buy another tomorrow, except Makita has discontinued it in favour of the BO6050J, which unfortunately uses a new pad system that isn't compatible with the older machines. A frustrating decision from a brand that had been getting everything else right. Our old machine is being repaired, and we'll try the new one, but the pad change means Makita isn't fully back in my good books yet.
Our technique for sanding epoxy
When sanding cured epoxy, we keep the paper cutting cleanly by working in stages: starting with a coarse grit and stepping down gradually to the finish we want, changing papers often, and blowing the dust out of the machine regularly.
