I used one of these sanders to remove heavy textured paint from the plaster walls of my 1890's Victorian in Maryland. This involved sanding every inch of a 3000 square foot house with heavy grit (60 grit) paper over a three month period. I estimate that I ran this unit for over 30 hours a week for the entire three months without a break. I still have it and it works fine.
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br /The unit has a couple of problems that I noted over time:
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br /1. The dust collector is cloth over a steel spring that tears where the cloth meets the hard plastic base of the dust collection bag.
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br /2. The pad that accepts the hook-and-loop paper sometimes tears when removing the paper. This is easily replaced, but isn't cheap to do.
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br /3. While the dust collector works pretty well (until it tears, that is), it is small and you have to stop work often to empty it. This is not a problem with the small jobs I use it on now, but it was annoying when I was sanding the walls.
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br /4. Paper is costly and you will have to be careful of which brand you buy. There are some sanders with just 4 dust collection holes, while this one has I think 8, so you need to buy the paper that is right for the sander. They do sell it in 25 sheet packs, which cuts down on the cost. We used about 10 such packs, each costing about $10 to $15 at the big box store near us.
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br /One final bit of advise: Always wear a resperator or face mask when sanding paint. Safety glasses are a must too.

before this unit, I had an off-brand $30 4" square pad sander that I used to polish the intake manifold on my car. It burned out after probably less than 40 hours of use.
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br /I bought this sander as a replacement when I bought a house and decided to refinish the wood floors. I rented a drum sander to remove the bulk of the old finish, but I had to trace around the edge of all the rooms to remove the material. I bought this sander for $69 at Lowes and about 20 sheets of 40 grit paper, and this little sucker hummed away for hours and knocked out all the excess finish.
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br /After about a week of walking over the exposed wood, painting walls, and moving scaffolding, I had to do a once-over on the wood to clean it up. I hit the whole floor (about 500 sq. ft.) with 60 grit, then did it again with 100 grit. This little sander cleaned it up beautifully, and I was surprised that it ran under heavy cyclic loading for about 5 hours without a hiccup. My knees didn't do as well.
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br /I'm glad I bought it and expect that it will withstand many more hours of continued abuse.

I had the opportunity to use one of these sanders on a recent remodel job. I was surprised at how well the dustless bag actually collected sanded material. The random orbit works well on any grain pattern and the hookless sandpaper is very easy to use and convenient.
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br /When I saw the price for one on Amazon, I was blown away. I ordered it immediately. It won't replace the need for a heavy-duty belt sander, but for finishing work this is one fine piece of equipment. I'll be using it a lot when I refinish our wood floors this summer.

I love this sander. Next to my Bosch "Sawz-all" this is my favorite power tool. I have used it on prejects that range from sanding the body work on my race bike to sanding the plaster walls in our 1903 Craftsman house to sanding woodworking projects. This sander is built to last and can be used as hard as you want. The only comments I do have is 1) you need to be careful when remmoving the sandpaper from the hook and loop disc, it is best to pull the sandpaper off in a direction that is parallel to the surface of the pad, basically pulling the sandpaper back over itself. If you pull it off perpendicular to the surface of the pad, the hook and loop pad tends to pull apart. 2) The hook and loop pad tends to get chewed up if you are not careful about replacing worn sandpaper. But that said, after almost three years of hard use mine is still on it's first hook and loop pad and is now more like a 4.5inch sander than a 5inch sander.....time to replace it.

I have used dewalt sanders for many years.
br /I own 14 dw 420/421 models. I just retired my
br /first 420 after 7 years aprox.
br / This sander is not up to snuff.
br /Excessive vibration and very heavy weight make this sander
br /very uncomfortable after 45 min to 1 hr of
br /sanding. Not all the sanding you do will be on top of
br /a flat surface that is where the weight becomes a
br /big problem. The sander is also very tall which
br /makes it harder to control.
br /I would suggest a lighter /shorter height model.

The sander works well and has typical DeWalt quality in build. However, the vibration is excessive in my opinion. I've used other oscillating sanders that produce a lot less feedback for the user. This thing creates some serious feedback that gave my friend hives when he used it.
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br /The built in vacuum is my favorite feature, and works really well at picking up debris, even dust-size paint particles. You should still use a face mask if you're sanding anything other than wood, but the vacuum drastically cuts down on air born debris.
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This sander worked well taking a few cabinets down to bare wood for refinishing. Works best horizontal sanding, a bit heavy for vertical work. Changing sanding discs is quick and easy. Especially like the shop vac port which made for very little dust.

Ease of use, dust bag, easy on/off of sanding discs are all great features.

Yeah, this is the definately sander to own (or equivalently the PC brand, which is also good).
br /Aside from the effectiveness of the machine itself as a sander, I truly appreciate the instant ease of changing the sanding discs. Too many times I've changed from 60 grit to 100 grit to 180 grit and then need to go back to the 100 or 60 again. Presto chango! Just remove the current disc and use the old 100 disc again.
br /This sander is not wasteful like the quarter sheet sanders, where you only get one use from the paper, these sanding discs can be used and reused many, many times and always stay tight on the sander. The discs do not tear or crease when you remove them, there's no sticky mess or clamping gymnastics, the hook and loop attach lets you change and rechange discs instantly with ease-ease-ease. This aspect alone has revised my entire philosophy of machine sanding.
br /And those discs do last forever. So maybe they cost a bit more up front but you can save them and get every bit of use out of them by reusing and reusing and reusing them until they are totally depleted. Definately worth the extra cost which can also be moderated by buying in bulk from a discount supplier. I keep my used discs in a 5 1/4 floppy disk strorage box, fits perfectly and prevents curling.
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br /One criticism of the unit though, the "rubber" base pad does not last forever, mine just plain disintergrated after about four years and I had to replace it for about $20. But even though I grumbled about that I'm still very keen on this sander.
br /Also, I have the older model with the plastic dust collector which I think was better than the cloth bag.
br /In short, its the best, and most cost effective, sanding investment I ever made and I should have bought one of these years before.
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DEWALT D26451K 3 Amp 5-Inch Random Orbit Sander with Cloth Dust Bag
br /Well, my old 1/4 sheet sander finally died, and I decided to go with the DeWalt random orbital sander, based on the mainly-good reviews. Let me tell you, I am blown away by how well this thing works. I am finish sanding several pine chests I am making, and the DeWalt sander is doing a beautiful job. I started with 120 grit paper, and then went right to 220 grit - great job. I had some 150 grit, but decided to skip that when I saw how good the finish was from the 120 grit.
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br /This sander goes with the grain, across the grain, whichever way you want it and does an excellent job. Most of my sanding was on flat surfaces, which made life a lot easier, but I also sanded a rounded-top treasure chest I am making, and it did a great job on that, too.
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br /The sander is not too heavy, and the vibration is well balanced, so my hand did not fall off after three hours of sanding. Yes, the sandpaper discs are somewhat expensive, but when you factor in how well and fast this thing works, it may be a wash. The cloth bag also did a reasonable job catching the dust.
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br /Can you tell I am very happy with this sander?

I have had this sander for about 9 years, and I have sanded over one billion square yards of wood. Well, not really, but I have put several hundred hours of sanding soft wood, hard wood, MDF, and my sister has borrowed it to sand countless acreage of drywall.
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br /The dust collection isn't terrific, but it works. It works great when plugged into a shop vac, though.
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br /About the only thing that has a little bit of wear is the rubber boot over the on/off switch. I have not used any of the other brands of random orbit sanders, so I cannot speak for comparison.

I've had mine for over a year now. With coarse sandpaper, it is plenty agressive to remove finishes and tackle other tough tasks. It delivers glass-smooth surfaces when I need it to. I've had no problems controlling it, but then I don't have anything to compare it to.
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br /It sees use almost every weekend - sometimes for hours. It is a real workhorse. I am at the point that I rarely sand anything by hand any more thanks to this machine.
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br /Its dust collection is very good as compared to the old Dewalt it replaced. If connected to a vac, the dust collection is superb.
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br /I will buy another one of these when this one dies some years from now.

I'm well pleased with the DeWalt D26451K Orbit Sander. Good adhesion of sandpaper and dust bag does not fall off like previous design. Recommend others to purchase.

DeWalt D26451K 3 Amp 5-Inch Random Orbit Sander with Cloth Dust Bag
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br /One the best sanders I have ever owned and believe me it gets it used daily.

I thought this was a variable speed sander, it is not. Thr on-off switch sometimes does not work and it is only uses 4 times.

I ORDERED THIS SANDER JULY 5 AND IT ARRIVED TODAY, JULY 8. I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO USE IT YET, BUT KNOWING DE-WALT TOOLS, I AM SURE I WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED WITH IT. THE PRICE FROM AMAZON DOT COM WAS GOOD AND THE DELIVERY, IN ONLY THREE DAYS WAS EXCELLANT. I ALSO ORDERED A BOX OF SANDING DISCS WITH THE SANDER. THE SHIPMENT ARRIVED VIA UPS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. THANK YOU AMAZON DOT COM AND UPS. I'LL WRITE ANOTHER REVIEW OF THIS PRODUCT AFTER I HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO PUT IT TO USE ON A PROJECT. I OWN MANY DE-WALT POWER TOOLS, FROM A COMPRESSOR TO SEVERAL CORDLESS DRILLS AND A RECIPROCATING SAW AND I DON'T EVEN LOOK AT ANY OTHER BRAND. DE-WALT IS THE BEST.

Compared to a 1/4 sheet sander, this "hook loop" sander is an environmental and economic folly. The sandpaper costs around three times as much as standard sheet-cut paper, and the throw-away paper itself uses more material - one half of the 'hook and loop' fasteners. This sander will cost you a lot more to use than a comparable 1/4 sheet sander, and it will contribute needless extra waste to our already strained environment. I'm using a DeWalt D46221K which produces great results - and does a good job collecting its own dust - without the added financial and environmental burden.
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br /That said, I'm sure this is another reliable and highly effective DeWalt product. It's just a shame to see palm sanders move towards greater environmental irresponsibility and pricier sandpaper.