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This spring I've got a fair bit bit of painting to do - mostly exterior door/window frames (wooden), metal garage door. What sander do I need to buy for sanding them down - Palm sander/belt sander/one of those OIS multitools?
If it makes any difference I already have a few Makita 18v tools,
If you already have the batteries the makita 18v mulitool makes a cracking detail sander.
Belt sanders are really for removing large quantities of material rather than taking the top surface off.
For anything less detailed any of the circular random orbit sanders that you can easily hook up to a hoover / extractor will work well. The 150mm ones by Metabo, Mafell and AEG are all the same mechanism inside and gives a good range of settings between small and large orbits and speed to get either gentle smoothing or rapid material removal. The AEG models are the cheapest but I had to do a bit of bodging to get an extractor fitted, the metabo one costs a little more but hooks up easily to an extractor.
Most cheaper ones have a dust bag (which is pretty much useless) but a weird shaped connect you can't extract from - the only exception I've come across is Ryobi who have useful circular dust ports on most of their kits and their 125mm random orbit sanders are pretty good for stripping and smoothing, just don't have as much grunt for removing larger amounts of material as the ones above (the ryobi RS290 if you can still find one in the uk)
an oscillating multi tool with a sanding attachment seems to work quite well. The mains powered bosch ones are around £50 and the battery powered ones start at the £100 mark with batteries included.
If you've already got makita batteries something like this might work - they are massively useful tools that can be used for all sorts of tasks.
Yeah, don't want a belt sander - a big one will go through your garage door in seconds...
For large areas though you're going to want something bigger than a palm/detail sander I reckon.
I just bought a 125 mm Makita random orbit sander off Toolstop for silly cheap. It was the most powerful (by some margin) 125 mm sander I found (and I just like Makita stuff).
I also have a Bosch multitool which is very good for detail sanding.
I think the combination of a 125 or 150 mm orbit sander and delta/detail sander would cover most bases.
bosch mouse and an occilating tool made light work of mine.....
the joy of having that to do again this summer :S
I have around 9x45m/12 long rooms and corridors at work that are parquet floored. They are all to be done at some point in the future during upgrading and developing the mainly empty building.
Site manager wanted to get the maintenance guys to use two of their hand sanders to do the job, madness, just signed off an a 9hp Honda engined floor sander for them.
Looking forward to seeing how much damage they cause with it.
What was the OPs question?
Ta all - Multitool it is then - that looks like the justification I need for adding to my Makita collection then. Oh aye and 9hp Honda for the tricky bits around the edges.....
😉
I'd go cordless multitool for the detail bits and a mains RO for larger sections.
[img] 
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Going to hire half a dozen technical college students for the tricky corner bits.
This
[img] https://goo.gl/OGvMHc [/img]
Sanded all this
[img] https://goo.gl/9PQ34x [/img]
So I could do this
[img] https://goo.gl/pRCL3p [/img]
Where'd you get your old wood WCA? What is it?
125mm random orbital sander, personally i would not go for a battery one just because of the run time. replacement hook and loop sandpaper from screwfix, cheap as chips and decent quality.
i've been using a cheap ryobi one, ros300 i think, that cost me about 30quid from jewson tools direct (they often have a tenner off vouchers). its one of my most used tools in my business and its been fine and i've done 3 seasons of heavy work with it. i did have to replace the sanding pad just because it was'nt gripping the paper as well after about 18months (under warranty) but as i say i use mine a lot and for extended periods. way way more than a diy'er would.
i mainly bought it just to see if the finish was better than a rectangular pad sander, thats why i bought cheap, and imho its worlds apart. this year i'm going to retire it and buy a makita one.
Think WCA used pallets.
Hella long bits of wood for pallets no? (the bits on the floor anyways...)
I've got 3: large Makita belt sander; Bosch random orbital & Bosch palm sander - all good for different jobs.
I'd recommend a random orbital as a good general purpose one - BUT try to get one with Spring clips that uses 1/3 sheets of normal abrasive paper rather than the Velcro type of sanding pads as they work out much cheaper....
I did not know one could get such large pallets! There you go, everyday is a school day...
I've got a 125mm orbital sander (Festool), brilliant bit of kit, have stripped and sanded the whole kitchen floor in only a few hours..
[url= https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3871/14458291219_e0173fa03b_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3871/14458291219_e0173fa03b_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/o2Cwg6 ]Sanding the floor[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr