powered drywall sander for Harry multiple home owner recommendations please

[PILOON]

Hey, pros never use other than paper tapes!
They totally frown on the mesh stuff, might be economics and might be pride. Don't know.
One way to identify a real pro is to look at his screw drill: generally he cut off the plug and added a poorly spliced 12-16 foot extension to that screw gun line.
Another is that he never stops his driver but simply adds a screw every 2 seconds from his handful of screws. Sounds like zap/bang zap/bang etc.

 

[newbury]

Just an update on my search for a powered drywall sander, as usual I concocted my own.

Newbury, on sanding - if you use thin coats you will not need to sand between coats. Any ridges can be knocked off by running a drywall knife along them at an angle like another poster said.

So you have the tape setting, (6 in knife) the cover coat (8 in knife), and the finish coat (8-12 in depending). If you are going for first class product, maybe another coat after that at least in some places.

Use the green bucket mud but add a few drops of water from your knife into the pan and stir up to make it more workable than it comes out of the bucket. This makes it possible to get a thin coat with little effort. The finish coat can be, should be, pretty wet.

At this point you have three thin coats on and have done no sanding. Finish up by feathering edges as needed. You can sand a whole wall in just a few minutes with that black open mesh stuff on the end of an aluminum pole. It doesn't weigh much and it doesn't cost much and it doesn't take long.

It is a lot easier to show than to write about but I am sure a pertinent video can be found on the web.

But any sanding without a vacuum still produces lots of dust. And that black open mesh stuff is wonderful for drywall.

Well my first drywall project I "attacked" I wrote about on another thread.

I'm working one now. Wallpapered and refloored a small bathroom over 30 years ago. Didn't take into account that 4 teenagers (2 unborn at that time) would routinely shower until the water turns cold. Resulting humidity levels caused a small corner of wallpaper near the ceiling to peel back from the wall. With children moved out bathroom went unused. To make her mother happy, daughter pulled all the wallpaper off the walls, while we were gone for a month.

No wallpaper stripper, just brute force and a spackling blade. Where the drywall wasn't stripped of it's surface the 30 yr old wallpaper glue was left in a waffled surface about 1/8 inch thick. She then painted over it twice with a thick paint.
Resulting painted surface:
View attachment 457552

View attachment 457553

The resulting surface, where it was not gauged down through the drywall paper and deeper was difficult to remove. I finally found if I put CitriStrip on it and let it soak in for 12 hours I could get down to drywall after about 3 applications.

Then came the skimcoating, which I had not done before on a large surface. Let me just say it's been a long learning curve, taking about 1 gallon of mud, 1/2 gallon of paint, several new tools. I'm on about the last coat of paint. I've learned that a Dewalt ROS coupled with a $12 wet dry/vac and hooked up like a hookah is an excellent dry wall mud sanding tool. That some drywall mud can take up to three days at 60 degrees F to harden.

I thought the project would take a week, it's been three. In retrospect I could have hung new drywall quicker, but I've got several walls that prior owners used contact paper on and I know the difficulty of getting that off and the need for "skimcoating" skills.

Note I rarely worked on it more than 1 hour a day. Several times I'd put down a layer of "Rx-35 PRO-999 1 gal. Drywall Repair and Sealer Primer", then a day later a layer of skim coat, then a day later try to paint and it would bubble up in some small sections which resulted in a "peelcoat". Thus requiring sanding down and back to step one. I finally figured out to let it sit 2 days. Perhaps I should have heated the house to over 62 degrees.

Another great help to me was a 22 inch "magic trowel", basically a 22" squeegee, and really thin mud, which really cut down on the ridges.

My "powered drywall sander" worked very well.

This is the power head of my $12 wet dry vac.
You can see the hose hanging down on the right. It was just some spare hose I had which I jammed in there.
I put enough water into the vac so the air "bubbled" through and the water trapped virtually ALL of the dust.



The 5" power sander fit the hoses precisely, so tight no duct tape was used.
Thus for about $75 I've a powered 5" "dustless" drywall sander very comparable in function to the Aleko 9", but it's half the price and I can (and do) use the vacuum and sander (which I sorely needed for woodworking anyways) separately. If I have to do higher places I'll put the ROS on a pole and a switched outlet.

When I only had a little to sand I'd use a Hyde Tools 09170 Dust-Free Drywall Vacuum Sander again with my $12 vacuum w/ water filter.

We are OT as far as the OP is concerned but it's a good thread for the rest of us (I've learned a little!)...I use those hand held sanders that accept the open weave sandpaper (looks like a concrete float) and do wide circular motions with light pressure around the joints.

I REALLY like that that black open mesh stuff which is also called sandscreen.

 

[EddieWalker]

I used to use that black open mesh sanding screen, but found it got dull too fast and I was always changing it out. 3M makes a sandpaper that is sold at Home Depot that I like a lot better. Never buy the stuff sold at Lowes, they have the worse sandpaper there.

I always mix my mud before using it. Mixing it is very important to get it nice and smooth. I've also learned over time that it's really important what you use to spread the mud with. The cheap taping knives are too flexible and it's very hard to get a clean edge with them. I buy the most expensive ones now, which are only a few bucks more then the cheap ones, and found that the results are much better. Less sanding too!!!

 

[newbury]

I used to use that black open mesh sanding screen, but found it got dull too fast and I was always changing it out. 3M makes a sandpaper that is sold at Home Depot that I like a lot better. Never buy the stuff sold at Lowes, they have the worse sandpaper there.
<snip>

The 3M sanding screens I bought at Home Depot are black open mesh. I used those instead of sandpaper because the open mesh lets the vacuum suck up all the dust.

 

[downsizingnow48]

Glad that the black open mesh stuff worked for your application.