Finishing plywood

[Silver1omo]

I'm making a small coffee table/controller box with 3 sides made of laminated ply.
I used a hand plane for the tabletop (~4' x 15''), but the other 2 laminated sides are too small. I'm considering to buy a sander to cut the labor time :P
Are the orbital random sanders better than finishing sanders?
Or just used for different purposes?
Or should I just keep going with my sanding block and elbow grease?

[1Michael]

I believe the orbital sanders are for finishing only. I would use a belt or hand for the rough stuff.

[motorider200]

I would be very careful with a belt sander, you can remove a lot of material in a big hurry and end up with an uneven surface.

[Renovator]

Hi.
I generally find Random Orbital sanders very versatile and the most forgiving. The random aspect means that they don't tend to gouge the wood - even when using coarse grit paper, but give very fast rate of removal. And when you go to a finer grit they provide fantastic finishing. The demos of the Festool Rotex on the web show the range of work that can be done with a Random Orbital. There are some pretty good examples of mirror finish work that guys have done - and I'm busy stripping a house with one at the moment. Festool is pretty much at the top of the range ( price wise at least 8O ) but you get similar results with others.

My brother uses a belt sander to prep hardwood stock and a random orbital to finish as there is not a single grain direction on the finished article - another advantage of the random orbital.

Hope that is of some help.

[Rolex]

Did I miss something? What is it that you are doing with the hand plane or proposing to do with the random orbit sander? Are you trying to make the ply's thinner?

[Silver1omo]

Did I miss something? What is it that you are doing with the hand plane or proposing to do with the random orbit sander? Are you trying to make the ply's thinner?

I'm making a box ~48'' L x 15'' W x 10'' H. The tabletop/box cover and small sides are translam 3/4'' ply (2'' pieces glued together). When cutting and/or gluing the pieces some of the borders end up not being entirely flat.
For the tabletop/box cover I used a hand plane to make an even surface that at this point only needs finishing. the small sides (13 1/2'' x 8'') are too small to use my hand plane, so I'm sanding them by hand (kind of a PITA). So I plan to buy a sander, but I don't know what would be the best option.

Something like this:

Image not available

I know I should have cut the pieces for the sides at 16'' + some extra and used the hand plane and then cut them to size... But I already have them at 8'' + some extra :M

[Rolex]

Gotcha, I didn't realize it was stacked lamination that you were referring to. In that scenario, I have used a Porter Cable random Orbit sander and good quality 80 grit sand paper and had no problem achieving results I was after.

[Silver1omo]

It seems like I need to find a random orbit... Hopefully it won't be awfully expensive around here....

[PassingInterest]

I'd like to recommend the Bosch 1250DEVS 6-1/2-Amp 6-Inch Random Orbit Sander.

The reason I like this one is the versatility it offers.
In addition to the obvious continuously variable speed adjustment, there is also a switch to select an aggressive action or fine finish (RO) action.

In the "aggressive" setting, it still uses an orbital action, but the spin geared and motor-driven and no longer "random." In other words, the "aggressive" setting is pretty aggressive at material removal, which is pretty handy at times.

I follow an "aggressive" sand with a step backward in coarseness (go more coarse) in the fine finish RO mode and progress through the sandpaper coarsenesses from there.

Here is a photo which shows the switch used for selecting either an aggressive action, or fine finish RO action.

[Silver1omo]

Thanks for the rec. I'll try to look around this weekend.

[numberoneoppa]

Looks kinda pricey. To be honest, for what it is, I find the 15-20 dollar orbital I picked up from Harbor Freight pretty good for what it is.

[Silver1omo]

Yup, it seems pricey and will be even more around here (I live in Mexico). I don't have access to a Harbor Freight so I'll see what I can get without breaking the bank... Again...

[Silver1omo]

Well I saw a couple of sanders around here:
Craftsman 315.112170 (Could not found info on the model...)
Milwaukee 6021-21
Dewalt D26451
The craftsman has the best price, does anyone have any idea on how good or bad is it?