pads, so be careful when using abrasive
materials supplied by others.
Why so many different kinds of
sanding materials?
Offering an array of different engineered
abrasives came about naturally for Fes-
tool. While they first became known in
Germany for the development of a port-
able chain saw in the 1920’s (photo right),
they really made their mark shortly after
WWII with the development of the first
powered orbital hand sander (lower photo
right.)
This tool so improved the efficiency of the
German furniture makers that, according
to a story in the January 2005 issue of
“Handy” magazine, those artisans would
travel for miles by bicycle to pay their de-
posits knowing they would wait weeks
just to receive one.
(These photos are from the Handy maga-
zine article which can be found on the
Festool web site, www.festoolusa.com.)
Since that time Festool has refined and
expanded the art and science of power
hand sanding. Along the way they have
introduced numerous machines for mov-
ing the abrasive particles across the sur-
face of the wood, added all these differ-
ent kinds of abrasive materials, and de-
signed integrated dust collection creating
whole “systems” optimized for this task.
Our next task is to look at the sanders
themselves.
To Next Page
Loading...
