What is the best floor sander to buy?

What is the best floor sander to buy?

I am often asked about what is the best floor sander to buy I would suggest for professional floor sanding and although my experience is in selling solid and engineered real wood floors I knew just the man to ask so I  spoke with my friend Nick Peters at Granwax  because what he knows about floor sanding and finishing is beyond belief He said the best three floor-sanders are

1 Clarke Floorcrafter

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e94BWGI8_fo This clip also shows the finishing sander that I believe there is no longer a main dealer in the UK for these machines and so it goes without saying they are very hard to get parts for secondhand models meaning long downtimes if they breakdown as you weight for parts to be sent to the UK

2  Lagler Hummel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV6jryqxFGA I love the guy in this has clipped the sander to his belt. This company are very well-liked by professional floor sanders, there is good support for them throughout the UK and training offered in the UK and parts and servicing available in the UK New the are around £   and second hand on places like eBay for around £1500

3  Kunzel & Tasin

http://gehlflooring.com/products.asp?pid=308 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM0NNhsxLvw Very good and the cheapest to run because instead of buying packs of pre-cut belts this sander lets you fit your own from a 50m roll However it takes a bit longer to fit as you need to use alan keys each time to open and tighten the sandpaper back in place. You can find one secondhand for sale for around  £600.  although it might need a service unless it’s been reconditioned.

You will also need an edging sander as seen in the first clip and I would advise getting trained how to use one or they can put big dents in a floor before you know whats happened.

All these are heavy machines and they have to be carried as the drums can’t be rolled along pavements and up peoples drives. The weight is needed as the drum machines are used to take the cupping out of floorboards if the boards are not cupped you can use a lighter finishing sander.

4 Pallmann Spider

Floor sanding training and franchises in the Uk have been offering training on the Pallmann Spider as an end to end solution and selling it with a Festool dust extractor which I gather is not quite man enough for dust-free floor sanding.

A good friend of mine was looking to start his own business and found an offer of training you to start a floor sanding business ( I didn’t find out till later on) he was told the Pallman Spider was the ultimate end to end solution for sanding all types of wood floors. As you would guess every business has a steep learning curve so after the basic training a lot of the initial problems were put down to lack of experience, but as my friend grew in experience and spoke to the others from his course it turned out a lot of his problems were down to the Pallmann spider.

The said he spider workes ok on engineered boards because engineered boards stay nice and flat however most sanding is on solid pine which will be cupped and the 2 problems were, firstly to sand cupped boards with the spider you need to add the weighted yoaks and start with a say 40 grit sandpaper then work back with finer grits however the 40 grit sandpaper left irregular scratches across the face of the boards which even after multiple sands with lighter sandpaper would still show. Secondly even with the weighted yoaks added the spider would shake and dance around on the cupped boards leaving heavy edge scratches.

In the end, my friend had to buy a secondhand Hummel machine for the majority of his floor-sanding work leaving the Pallmann Spider as a finishing sander rather than the end to end solution he was promised by the training company.

With any big purchase in bussiness you need to get good advice and have a conversation on what your needs are and top of my list of people to contact would be Floorstock for Sales servicing, sander hire and advice of all finishing products.