Beating the enemy - dust

The Rolls Royce of sanders

I had long concluded that when it came to sanding there was always going to be dust on the hanky when I blew my nose at the end of the day - even with the brilliant Dust-Be-Gone dust mask.

But all that changed on the weekend when I sanded the hardwood flooring in one of the upstairs' bedrooms with my Festool RS100CQ sander connected to the Festool CT26E dust extractor (which is a euphemism for "vacuum cleaner").

After a day of sanding, the hanky was clean - not a speck.  Now that's impressive.

You may ask: why sand an entire floor with a 1/3 sheet sander?  Well, two reasons:

1. We don't want every imperfection eradicated, if that were the case we'd use laminate flooring over a chipboard floor. No, we want a floor that has some character but no splinters.
2. For the cost of hiring a floor sander I purchased the the RS100CQ second hand. And as sanders go - it is the Rolls Royce.