Yuk - more Brown Stuff - and a thicknesser / planer

Yuk. The horrible floor sanders were a ordeal, pretty much as I recall from my previous 2 encounters with their ilk, back in the late 90s.

The HT7 (edging sander) and HT8 (floor sander) are big, crude beasts. The larger HT8 "lawn mower" device uses a giant brushed universal motor that runs a cylindrical drum at something like 4000rpm, with a large piece of emery paper wrapped around it. If not secured correctly with the shitty little slot headed screws, the paper will come off in use, grenading and making a godawful mess. Of course, if a previous user has bent one of the fixings screws, it becomes quite difficult to tighten up the clamp sufficiently to avoid said issue. Furthermore, if the supplied abrasive is made of paper, rather than fabric, it just wants to tear and grenade when you just look at it.

The edging sander was a bit better and we ended up using it for about half of the bulk sanding. The problem with that is that the disc is about 10" diameter and spins at a silly speed too, so is prone to burning any paint or wood that offers any degree of resistance. All in all, not ideal.

So, I've invested in a Makita 9040 belt sander for £290 and a Titan planer thicknesser for £190. Given that the sanders cost me ~£150 for 3-4 days of usable time, and given how shit they were, this isn't such a big deal. 

The replacement blocks were £1566 plus £122 for a pallet delivery. The originals were 2-1/4" x 10-1/4" and although there's no standard size for parquet floors, there certainly wasn't any chance of finding anything the right size. The Antique Flooring Company who supplied the flooring supplied them cut down to size but that didn't include reducing the height to exactly match the originals. I'd sort of planned to sand them down using the aforementioned floor sanders but that's looking rather naive with hindsight. Hence the thicknesser, which will both reduce them to the correct thickness and also remove the shitty varnish and paint which would otherwise clog up the abrasives in no time.

I collected the thicknesser from Screwfix at the weekend (Titan is their own brand, although it's also sold under other brand names). This is a decent looking device and seems to have been in production for almost a decade now, to generally good reviews.

The makita belt sander is the biggest they sell and the consensus seems to be that it's a benchmark for the other belt sanders out there, apart from the top end professional machines. With 1010W claimed power, it's slightly less powerful than its sister (the 9030) but offers variable speed, which could be helpful to avoid burning the blocks.

It's Xmas Eve today, so probably best not to crank up either machine yet. That can wait until Boxing Day or later.

Not keen on having so many woodworking tools clogging up the workshop but needs must etc.