palm sander leaving imperfections

[haight78]

I have been having an extremely annoying problem with palm sanders. I have been getting half moon squiggly lines about a 1/8" long x 1/16" high. I have used 4 different palm sanders Dewalt, B&D, Ryobi, and Sears all with the same squiggly lines in my work. All grits too. I am using new paper and still see this patern which is deep enough to see sometimes with the naked eye and other times after appling mineral spirits. It is frustrasting because, one I can't fix the problem and two, it requires additional work to sand out the squigglies. Has anyone else had this problem? What is the solution? Would I get better results with an orbital sander? Wayne

[boogatoo]

1. When the sand paper installed on the sander is new and you are sanding soft wood, Hold your palm sander in one hand give a few strokes on the sand paper with another piece of sandpaper using your other hand. Blow the sand paper to remove any loose grain.

2. Don't use cheap paper on wich grains may vary in size or are stuck on the backer with a cheap glue. Grains might detach get trapped between your work and the sand paper, marking your work. Use aluminum oxyde paper.

3. You probalbly go to fast with your sander not leaving time to the random action to "erase" the previous marks.(I believe this is your mistake)

4. Don't use cheap sander. On some cheaper sanders, the swirls are as large as 1/8". On better brands like Porter Cable, Dewalt, Makita, Bosh the swirls are as low as 1/16 - 1/32.

5. Blow or vaccum your work each time you change grit.

6. Remove excess dried glue before sanding. It could detach and get trapped between your work and the sand paper, marking your work.

[haight78]

Thanks for the advice boogatoo. The current sander I am using is a Ryobi with a 1/16 swirl, 2 amp, 14,000 opm. I have been using aliminum oxide paper. This is the 4th sander. I may be going too fast like you say. Also I will try giving a few stokes with another piece of sand paper. This has been a cronic problem and it is obviously some sort of foreign material trapped or a grit problem. But it happens on a regular basis and wastes my time and ruins my work. Wayne

[lucky788scroller]

do you do your final sanding by hand?I never use an orbital sander on scrolled stuff,but on furniture stuff I use a random orbital sander,and there are no marks visible after using that.But I also do my final sanding by hand,I only use the ROS when theres a lot of deep sanding to do. Also,be sure you keep your sander flat on your surface.

[PiALaModem]

You may be starting with too low a grit and as boogatoo surmises, not allowing enough time with the successive grits. Also, hand-sanding along the grain at the end should get rid of whatever swirl marks are left.