Orbital Sander Is Too Slow For Hand Tool Guy

My last post described me turning to my electron burners to make some Adirondack chairs.  There is no doubt in my mind that I saved a lot of time ripping boards with my table saw rather than cutting the same hundred feet with a handsaw.  As I said, this was a project about the end result so I sacrificed the enjoyment of the process to get it done.

Well surprise surprise.  I learned something about myself and about tool choices.  We all have a feeling for how long something should take us to accomplish something.  I think this is why a lot of power tool guys think they work so quickly as we don’t tend to count set up and clean up in our time estimates.  But I had to chuckle to myself after I saw what had  happened in my shop and I thought I’d share it with you.

I had a significant pile of pine pieces that I needed to smooth on both sides prior to assembling the second and third chairs in this series.  As I did with the first chair, I took my Bosch orbital sander, slapped a 60-grit disk on it and started making noise.  After about 1 1/2 hours I was, maybe, a bit more than half done with this when I said to myself, “This would go faster if I’d just plane the surfaces.”

And that’s exactly what I did.  I grabbed my #7 and a smoother and went to work.  It took less than 1/2 an hour to finish up my pile of parts.  Planing was sooooooo much faster that I regretted not thinking of it earlier.  To make the comparison more clear the boards that had been planed were also shiny smooth, whereas those treated to my orbital sander would need another go with 120-150 grit.

In the end, I could have saved myself at least 2-3 hours by planing the parts for the three chairs rather than using a sander.  I can’t say if this would have completely offset the handsaw vs table saw time difference but it sure would have taken a huge chunk out of it.  Interesting… at least I thought so.

At this point the 3 chairs are ready for paint, and just like it was planned, it’s supposed to rain for the next two days.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com