Sanding Fiberglass and Staying Clean
Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:45 am
Sanding fiberglass is NO fun!!! Its itchy and dirty and just not an indoors job.
We had no choice in the matter so we had to make it an indoors job so here's what we did.
I use a Skill brand random orbital sander, (walmart special) which is my best friend when it comes to smoothing fiberglass. As it turns out when you take the filter off, the round end that sticks into the filter is the perfect diameter to slide the end of my shop vac hose over. I outfitted my shop vac with the normal foam filter, and the paper prefilter that goes over it, then added a sealed bag, (see the shop vac section at your local walmart) that makes all the vacuumed debris go inside a bag instead of inside the vacuum. Then I cleaned the vents that the outbound air comes out so I could judge how much fiberglass dust was getting by. To my surprise, with two sanders setup this way, two of us were able to sand the whole inside of the boat without coveralls and dust masks, (I dont reccomend not wearing a dust mask when sanding fiberglass) and without so much as even a light dusting on ourselves. The exhaust ports on the vacuum didnt even get dusted. The only thing that slipped by was a tiny bit of dust that seemed to statically attach itself to the outside of the vacuum and any big pieces of wood or glass that were too big to get vacuumed up through the holes in the sander.
I will not sand fiberglass any other way ever again. A few hours of sanding and I'm not the least bit itchy. What you see dusted on the vacuum was 99% of what slipped by.
We had no choice in the matter so we had to make it an indoors job so here's what we did.
I use a Skill brand random orbital sander, (walmart special) which is my best friend when it comes to smoothing fiberglass. As it turns out when you take the filter off, the round end that sticks into the filter is the perfect diameter to slide the end of my shop vac hose over. I outfitted my shop vac with the normal foam filter, and the paper prefilter that goes over it, then added a sealed bag, (see the shop vac section at your local walmart) that makes all the vacuumed debris go inside a bag instead of inside the vacuum. Then I cleaned the vents that the outbound air comes out so I could judge how much fiberglass dust was getting by. To my surprise, with two sanders setup this way, two of us were able to sand the whole inside of the boat without coveralls and dust masks, (I dont reccomend not wearing a dust mask when sanding fiberglass) and without so much as even a light dusting on ourselves. The exhaust ports on the vacuum didnt even get dusted. The only thing that slipped by was a tiny bit of dust that seemed to statically attach itself to the outside of the vacuum and any big pieces of wood or glass that were too big to get vacuumed up through the holes in the sander.
I will not sand fiberglass any other way ever again. A few hours of sanding and I'm not the least bit itchy. What you see dusted on the vacuum was 99% of what slipped by.