Small power detail sander

[sbaxter]

Anyone ever use one of these?

https://www.amazon.com/Proxxon-28594-12 ... op?ie=UTF8

Apparently it has a non-US plug, so a transformer is required, which is available from the same company for about the same price as the tool itself. But the sanding attachments are about half an inch on a side, so it looks like it could be very promising for sanding jobs that take a good amount of time manually, especially in tight spaces, or for those of us who have limited hand function, hand pain or excessive fatigue. Also, given that the sanding attachments are placed at a bit of a remove from the machine itself, I could imagine doing some limited wet-sanding with it, using minimal water.

Qapla'

SSB

[SpaceRanger1]

You can make your own from an inexpensive battery-powered electric toothbrush.

[Andrew Gorman]

The cheap battery powered toothbrushes really don't have a lot of power and stall pretty easily. At least the dollar store cheapie I used. It worked on ejector pin marks, but it was a slow task. If I made a another one I would move up to a higher quality rechargeable toothbrush.

[Marco Scheloske]

I own one, and I love it.

[sbaxter]

The cheap battery powered toothbrushes really don't have a lot of power and stall pretty easily. At least the dollar store cheapie I used. It worked on ejector pin marks, but it was a slow task. If I made a another one I would move up to a higher quality rechargeable toothbrush.

I have done this -- I have an Oral B electric toothbrush (and some older ones in which the battery has died -- there are tutorials online on how to replace the batteries, though it usually involves some soldering, IIRC). I save my worn-out brush attachments and have converted a couple of them to take sandpaper attached to adhesive-backed Velcro, and would have no issue using my own toothbrush to do some sanding with the converted brushes. The only thing is, I haven't actually used them to sand anything yet. My model-building has been pretty much on hold for the last dozen years or so, due to lack of space. The room I used to use for building/painting had to be "converted" (read: restored) into a bedroom for my children. Lately, I have felt the itch to build rise to nearly overwhelming levels. Still not sure how I will handle airbrushing in Florida, where an air-conditioned workspace seems mandatory thanks to high outdoor humidity the majority of the year, but I digress ...

What sparked my interest was staring at a long-standing project I began probably 15 years ago -- to accurize the old Playmates TNG shuttlecraft Goddard. I think the exterior is mostly accurate, proportionately, and I don't care about the interior. I had sawed off the upper aft boxy half of the shuttle, but I could easily see that the surface was a mess of sink marks and uneven areas. In this photo of a random copy of this toy, you can get an idea of this flaw by looking at the warm sunlit (?) area on the top rear of the toy.



In an effort to correct this problem, I added sheet styrene on the top (the two side "boxes" needed to be a bit taller anyway), and I used liberal amounts of gap-filling CA, Bondo, and Aves all over the side surfaces. The result was a mess that proved well-nigh impossible to sand smooth, or at least, it exceeded my patience and endurance, and the project languished. I figured it might be a misfire completely and I might just get a second shuttle and start over, but I never threw out the one I started. Then, this past weekend I saw the piece again and, thinking I had little to lose, I decided to just say "Screw it" and go after it with my finishing sander. I presumed I might deal with melting plastic, but to my mild surprise that did not happen. Just a few minutes with some 80-grit and then 400-grit sandpaper made almost everything smooth, other than a couple of sink marks I missed. It helps that the portion of the shuttle on which I was working is all flat planes at various angles. My success got me to thinking about other powered sanding tools. The one at the original link could get into tighter spaces than the finishing sander, or even the converted toothbrush sander. So I wondered if anyone else had tried it; some of the positive reviews were written by those who said they used it with plastic models, so I'm strongly considering one.

Qapla'

SSB

[sbaxter]

I own one, and I love it.

Good to hear; thanks!

Qapla'

SSB