On 9/18/2008 8:09 AM Davej spake thus:

Went to Home Depot yesterday and see they have two sanders for rent.
One is a belt sander and the other is a large orbital. Both are
intended for floors. I just need to take the varnish off an old floor.
Is the big orbital the best tool for this? The room is 15x20ft. Any
idea how long this will take me or suggestions on the grit to begin
with? Thanks.

I see the first two replies didn't answer your rather direct question.
Not surprised.

Generally one uses the belt sander for the bulk of the floor; the
orbital is for the edges and corners.

Use the coarsest grit you can get to start, then work your way up to a
finer grit.

It won't take all that long. However, you really need to be careful with
those machines, especially the belt sander. If you've never done this
before, you might want to practice first. If you let the sander sit a
little too long in one spot, you've got a nice gouge you then have to
try to smooth out. It's worse on softwood floors (fir, pine) than
hardwood (oak or maple). The trick is to keep the machine moving, and to
use an overlapping pattern.

The thing that takes far longer than sanding is the subsequent dust
removal necessary to do a decent job of varnishing.


--
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

- Paulo Freire