Sawdust on the Floor

Each year the woodworking shows roll through the South Jersey, Philadelphia area. And each year I attend as many of them as possible. I enjoy looking at the “Newest and Better” tools that the vendors bring out to show. Some are truly great inventions, and some well…., let’s just say that they won’t be getting any of my money. Besides the new tools, there are always a lot of vendors showing off the latest upgrade to their product line. Again some of these fall into great idea, and then some fall short of the mark. One tool that I always stop and admire is the Sand-Flee.

While I will admit that the name conjures up some insect that lives either at the beach or the desert, the truth is that the Sand-Flee is really a great invention. The Sand-Flee is a “portable” table or bench top finish sander. The Sand-Flee is available in two sizes, the 18″ Sand-Flee and the 9″ Mini-Flee. Working much like the bigger and sometimes more expensive over arm finish sanders, the sand flee features a rotating drum which you cover with your desired grit paper. Over Arm sanders contain two rollers, one that does the sanding and the other that acts as a pinch roller. The amount of pressure exerted by the pinch roller can affect the flatness of the final sanding. A misadjusted pinch roller can drastic change the profile of your stock, and not always in a good way. The Sand-Flee does not employ a pinch roller, the only pressure exerted on the wood is from your finger pressure. Excessive pressure will wear the sanding material faster, it also tend to leave burn marks on your wood. Another distinction that the Sand-Flee has over the over Arm sanders is the lack of any height restriction. Over Arm sanders typically limit the size of the project to a few inches.

The concept with the and flee is that you simply attach the desired hook & loop grit sand paper to the Velcro covered roller, turn the machine on and run your stock over the rotating drum. The unit turns at 1725 RPM on the larger 18″ unit and 1700 RPM on the 9″ Mini. These speeds are sufficient enough to do a very effective job sanding, but not fast enough to burn the stock.

I build a lot of cope and stick cabinet doors. And no matter how carefully I set the cutter heights, sometimes the rail/stile joints do not always align perfectly. The only solution is then to sand the joints flat. I normally would turn to my random orbital sander for his task. While it does a great job in leveling the joints, the RO sander does nothing to ensure that the door is flat. However, if I were to use the Sand-Flee to sand the entire door as one piece, rather than just attack the problematic joint. Removing material from the entire door until the surfaces meet correctly. Assuming that the door was flat to begin with, it will remain flat after sanding.

Yes I realize that by sanding the entire door at once I would be cross grain sanding either the rail or stiles. Since they are perpendicular to each other, it’s impossible to sand one without cross grain sanding the opposing member of the door. The solution for this is very simple. Take another look at the picture of the Sand- Flee, Please take note of the fence . This fence which is pictured in its extreme left hand position, is totally adjustable to any spot on the table top. To rid your work of the scratch marks from cross grain sanding, you would simply move the fence over to the right, until you leave just enough of the drum exposed to equal the width of the rail or stile. Then holding your stock securely to the fence, run just the affected edge ( rail or stile) over the drum , removing just the scratch marks.

Another feature of the Sand-Flee is that you can install different grits sand paper on the roller at the same time. For instance, on the 18″ unit, you could start with a 4-5″ wide strip of 150 grit paper, followed by another 4-5″ section of 180 grit paper, followed by a final 4-5″ section of 220 grit paper. Set up like this you could do all three steps of your sanding process without ever changing the paper.

Using the fence which is locked at a 90 °angle the Sand-Flee could be used much like a jointer to sweeten up a glue joint. This would also be really handy for those small pieces that you would love to move over the jointer, but wouldn’t due to the small size of the stock. The action of the jointer can be very rough on super small pieces. Remember safety, when you consider using the jointer for small pieces, keep in mind where your fingers will be in relation to the spinning knives. Also consider what happens if the piece you are jointing gets caught in the knives. Please don’t take chances.

Speaking of small pieces, the Sand-Flee is the ideal sander for scroll saw work. I personally have sanded a piece of fret work that was no more then 1/8″ thick with the Sand-Flee, with absolutely no trouble. All I had to do was apply normal amounts of pressure with my hand, much like you would do when using a traditional tablesaw to move the stock over the roller.

At the end of the roller shaft is mandrel that will accept a sanding mop. The sanding mop is used for sanding of irregular shaped items. These work much like a buffing wheel. The vender suggested that a sanding mop equipped with a super fine grit paper such as 320-400 grit , could be used for sanding between coats of finish. Unfortunately I was unable to try this at the show.

Both units come with a dust port for removal of sawdust. Although the unit demonstrated developed very little saw dust, I would still connect the unit to my dust collector or a good shop vacuum. Remember some of the most harmful dust we produce in the shop is the super fine stuff that comes from sanding.

Ok, the question you are now probably asking is, ” Since the Sand-Flee appears to be a great product, did I buy one”? The answer to that question is “Not Yet”. The issue is not the machine itself, it’s the price. The retail price of the 18″ Sand-Flee is $699.00. While this is not the most expensive tool I have ever considered buying, it is still a considerable amount of change. On the other side of the coin, I have looked at this tool for several years, and still can’t find a good reason to reject it as something that I couldn’t or wouldn’t use. So the jury is still out on whether or not this tool finds a home in my shop.

OK, I am going to depart from my normal mode here and ask that any of you who have purchased or have ever used the Sand-Flee, please let me know what you thought of it. Is it worth the money, or whatever impressions you have on the Sand-Flee I would love to know.

For those of you who are new to the Sand-Flee, the attached You tube video does an exceptional job demonstrating the virtues of the Sand-Flee.

For more information on or to purchase any of the products discussed in this post, please click on the highlighted links and images in the post.

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1. Woodworking Techniques and Tips – Be Careful of What you Sand