When refinishing a hardwood floor with a rented commercial floor sander, how can you avoid creating dips when the sander first hits the floor? I’ve tried continually moving while letting down slowly with little success.
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story
Michael Hindle explores the efficacy of deep energy retrofits and discusses essential considerations for effective climate mitigation.
Featured Video
How to Install Cable Rail Around Wood-Post CornersHighlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
try a B&D Mouse... it takes a little longer, but the control is unbeatable!!
It's all experience. That's why I hire people who do it 8 hours every day. Has a learning curve.
DG/Builder
Practice, practice, practice.
It is all about touch and experience. Very much like waltzing.
Frankie
There he goes—one of God's own prototypes—a high powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die.
—Hunter S. Thompson
from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
spend an hour or so practicing with a peice of plywood, and use a less aggressive belt. it'll take a bit longer, but it's never seemed that hard to me to get a decently smooth floor. The other option is to rent a different style sander- if you don't need to take off much, the square-buff machines do ok.
zak
hmmm, somehow my second (and more serious) reply got lost in the ether... I'll try again...
I also vote for "experience". From everything I've read about using a drum sander (and no, I've never actually used one), it's all about technique and experience(and primarily experience.)
I refinished a hallway and bedroom in our house this summer, and shied away from using a drum sander for just this reason. I ended up using a 4-pad RO floor sander, and it was slow, but I'm satisfied with the results.
We had the hardwood floors (white oak) throughout our first-floor professionally refinished before we moved in, and even the perfeshinulls left ridges. I wasn't super pleased with the job, but at that point there were bigger things in life than ripply floors, so I let it go...
Good luck!
Aaaah... how true! That's where a good GC is worth his weight in $ bills. He knows which perfershionels leave ridges and which don't. That's the part you can't read in the yellow pages:)
DG/builder
Welcome to BT.
Find a drum sander to rent that has the lowering arm that allows you to lower the drum, not the whole sander.
A great place for Information, Comraderie, and a sucker punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
Quittin' Time
Floor finishing is one of those jobs that is highly underrated. I did my own floors for the first time 30 years ago. They came out ok but I vowed to never again venture into that realm. It's a beast running that machine hours on end, not to mention the noise and dust. I've seen many mediocre to bad floor jobs, it takes a lot of finesse to do a fine job. If you're not planning on becoming a floor guy, it's worth having a pro do it. Good luck.
Simply rent a buffer with sanding disks. For refinishing a drum sander is too much. Even for a new floor the drum sander is best to roughly level and then go to the buffer.
Did I mention the buffer? Go with the buffer. No, you won't be buffing anything, but it's called a buffer, so get the buffer. The buffer is a sander. Buffer.
Seriously, if you are at all handy, as you must be to take on refinishing, then you should be able to get a super flat surface if you use a buffer and go carefully.
Buffer.