When you need to sand a few pieces of wood or a full project (like a door), you may dread the idea of having to hand sand these items. While you certainly could use a belt sander or a vibration sander, both of these may remove too much of the surface or not enough of the surface, respectively. That creates more work and longer hours, something you may want to avoid if you are on a deadline. If you have never heard of a stroke sander, or you are interested in trying one, here is what stroke sanders are and how they shorten your work time.

What a Stroke Sander Is

Think about a door-wide table onto which you place any wood project of almost any width and almost any height or length, too. This highly specialized power sander has a horizontal sanding bar that slides from side to side as you push the piece you are working on through the opening underneath the sanding bar. A support bar or narrow table allows you to rest your work on a flat surface as you guide the wood through the opening below the sanding bar. If you want to work on a piece vertically, there are switches and locks that help you rotate the table, sanding bar and opening into a vertical position. In either position, horizontal or vertical, the sanding bar moves back and forth to quickly remove a preset amount of surface wood, lacquer, paint, etc.

How It Can Shorten Your Work Time

Like a table saw that quickly cuts wood pushed across its surface, the stroke sander quickly sands the wooden items pushed across its support table. (In fact, if you put your table saw and stroke sander side-by-side, you can cut and sand all of the wood you need in a two-step assembly line process. Add a drill press to the other side of your stroke sander and you can go from cutting to sanding to hole drilling with ease.) Where you may have taken several hours hand-sanding to a couple of hours with a vibrating sander, you can now get the correct sanding depth and fully sanded boards or project complete in minutes.

If you buy a stroke sander to use for anything else, such as heavy construction equipment for residential construction, be aware that you will need to bolt it down or place cinder blocks around the feet to hold the machine steady. In a home workshop, however, the cement floor is often flat and steady enough that you do not have to provide some stabilization for the machine. If you want, you can bolt it to your workshop floor, but be sure the sander is precisely where you want it because it will be difficult to move and remove after you bolt it down to a cement floor.