I'm your average weekend warrior do-it-yourselfer and my wife asked me to refinish our wooden address sign recently. Now we inherited the address sign with the home when we purchased it and I'd estimate probably 30-ish years of painting and repainting caked onto that sign. After hitting it with some coarse sandpaper to get an idea of what I was working with I clearly needed the help of a mechanical sander. Enter the Dewalt DWE6423K Variable Speed Random Orbit Sander.

I used the sander to refinish a maple table. I found the sander easy to use and effective. The dust collection is just okay. It will collect a good deal of dust, however there will still be dust everywhere. I used this inside of an apartment and my partner nicknamed me "little Chernobyl", after basically coating our apartment in dust. I don't think you can really avoid that though. Dust is small and is hard to contain.

Tool reviews are tough, it is rare that anyone leaving a review actually writes about how they used the tool, making it hard to understand if people are using the tool reasonably or for its intended purpose. Especially when they're leaving a bad review.

Well, as a former woodworker, it has been about 10 years since I’ve built anything, but The wife had a need for kitchen table, and with my sander in storage, I picked up this little number. I am currently without workshop space, so I opted to get the sander with the optional carrying bag, which is REALLY nice and keeping the house clean since sanders are the worst offenders for being messy. The bag itself isn’t all that, but it’s great at containing the mess and giving you a space to put the sandpaper.

My discontinued Craftsman model palm sander gave up on me. At first I was trying to replace the damaged part;No luck since the sander had been phased out . I ordered the deWalt sander and I was pleased with its performance. Great steady sanding motion, smooth motor and a nice dust collector bag. Very complete product.