Shop Time Part 3 - Orbital Sanding Blues

I hit a pretty dangerous wall with the farm table project that I’ve been working on. During the construction of the table I had some residual pain, but I thought that it was just the exertion from doing physical labor. Later once I started sanding the first bench, I figured out that the orbital sander that I’m using is causing a flair up with my carpel tunnel syndrome.

I ended up being out of commission for a couple of weeks while I sorted out how to finish my projects without injuring myself. I searched online for solutions and talked things over with my Dad. Eventually I landed on a few options for near and long term approaches.

In the near term, I need to severely limit my exposure to vibrating equipment. When I sand, I’m only allowing myself to sand for 15 minutes a day. Since I heavily use a mouse in my day job, my right wrist is much more sensitive to the nerve damage from vibration exposure. To adjust, I now only use the sander with my left hand. Finally, I need to make sure that every sanding session starts with a fresh disc of sandpaper. That way I can make sure that my tool is as effective as it can be during the limited time I can use it. Making these adjustments has gotten me over the finish line on the pieces for my dining room.

One of the other suggestions for a near term fix that I found was to get anti vibration gloves. These are gloves with thick padding on the palms to reduce the impact of vibration. I have not tried these. I found a regulatory site for the state of Washington that indicated that this measure is ineffective. My understanding is that since the gloves are finger-less, the vibrations are still carried through the rigid finger bones. That would still expose the medial nerve to potential damage. I might still try these to see if they help with comfort on my left hand but I’m not sure that they will prevent damage.

Another option for powered sanding is to try and make it as efficient as possible. With that in mind I might pick up a shop vac. That way I can hook up the shop vac hose to the sander’s dust collector so that less dust is left on the piece as I make multiple passes. Another improvement in this direction would be to get mesh disks instead of paper, which would also allow more dust to be sucked through the sander. I saw a YouTube video about how this combination can enhance the efficiency of a sander. Hopefully this approach would allow me to get more from the limited time that I can use the sander.

For long term plans, I’m thinking about investing more time and effort into hand tools. I’ve already done some experiments with hand plane sharpening, and I’ve been able to get a sheen on piece of pine I was practicing on. I’m also thinking about trying out card scrapers (or cabinet scrapers) to get a good finish on wood before applying oil or wax.