Our Best Sanding Advice From Your Fellow Pros

Jun 4, 2025

Sanding

Are there some sanding tips from these fellow pros that could make your life easier? Keep reading:

A Key to Better Sanding: Know Your Scratch

Do You Need a Power Station? Yes, and Here’s Why

Rhythmic Sanding: Better Results by Planetary Sanding to the Beat

Get Better Sanding by Taking Care of Your Drum

WTF Moments in Sanding: Dealing with Aluminum Oxide

Something That Sets You Apart and Costs Nothing: Keep it Clean

How Do You Know if a Wood Floor Can Be Sanded Again?

How Do You Control Dust on Your Wood Flooring Jobs?

Use This Checklist For Daily Edger Maintenance

Remote Floor Estimates—How to Increase Profits and Save Time on the Road

Remote Floor Estimates—How to Increase Profits and Save Time on the Road

Am25 Talking Shop Most Difficult

Tell Us About the Most Difficult Wood Floor Job You Ever Did

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How We Did This Floor: Edge-Grain in the Portland International Airport

Fm25 Fundamentals Scratch Hed

A Key to Better Sanding: Know Your Scratch

Planetary and Multi-Disc Sanders 101: A Technical Primer

Lifelong wood flooring pro T.J. Haas found a lot of people hadn’t actually used or experienced multi-discs and planetary sanders for wood floors, so he put together this primer on the different types of machines.

Photos courtesy of (clockwise from top left): Aaron Hall, Ash Stuart Smith, Danny Caffo, Pietro Corrao Parquet, Pat Goodman, Nicole Stanfield, Joe Smith; (center): Sarunas Gintvainis.

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A Complicated Challenge: Refinishing the Tavern on the Green

LED Coating Solutions

Avedis Duvenjian of LED Coating Solutions by Archetypal takes us through the refinishing of the historic Tavern on the Green Restaurant in New York City.

A Complicated Challenge: Refinishing the Tavern on the Green

Tell Us About the Most Difficult Wood Floor Job You Ever Did

We asked wood floor pros to share their most challenging jobs. Here are our favorite responses shared by our readers on the WFB Facebook and Instagram pages.

Am25 Talking Shop Most Difficult

How We Did This Floor: Edge-Grain in the Portland International Airport

Approximately 57,000 square feet of the Portland International Airport now has local edge-grain white oak wood flooring with an oil finish—a massive undertaking, even for a company like Pure Floors Inc. This is how they did it.

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A Key to Better Sanding: Know Your Scratch

Wood floor sanding expert Daniel Boone explains what some wood floor pros are missing when they say they "can't get the scratches out."

Fm25 Fundamentals Scratch Hed

Wood Floor Rescue

Wood Floor Rescue: Preserving a Piece of Montana History

Wood floor pro Alex Franklin was charged with preserving the character of the floors in the Kalispell Mercantile building, and he had to throw all of his experience at the renovation project.

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Domestic Species for Wood Flooring 101: What Pros Should Know

Lifelong wood flooring pro Bob Goldstein discusses helpful advice for installing, sanding and finishing the most common domestic wood flooring species.

Photo credits clockwise from top left: Rift-and-quartered select red oak from Allegheny Mountain Hardwood Flooring and installed by Ron Doran, hickory/pecan by Robert Welp, white oak by Aaron Hall, cherry refinished by Alex Ramirez, maple by Adrian Molitor, ash by Chris Hodges. Center: Walnut by Jamie Espinoza.

Learn How To Refinish Hardwood, Engineered & Aluminum Oxide Finished Floors (Sponsored)

See why The RASP by WerkMaster is the floor sander of choice for so many hardwood refinishers and flooring installers! The RASP is an all-in-one floor sanding solution, combining the power of 5 machines in 1.

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Rhythmic Sanding: Better Results by Planetary Sanding to the Beat

In my job helping contractors learn to work with the latest products in the industry, I have seen that there can sometimes be a substantial learning curve when they are working with planetary sanders for the first time, so I came up with this technique.

I’ve found that people have a hard time knowing the correct pace to use when planetary sanding, so I started using a metronome.

Wood Floor Rescue

Wood Floor Rescue: A Heart Attack of a Heart Pine Job

Lorie Davidson bid this heart pine job off of real estate photos. When he actually arrived at the farmhouse and saw its original floors, circa 1873, “I had to go back out to the truck and say the Lord’s Prayer," he says.

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Readers Respond: Pics of Readers' Favorite Spring Wood Flooring Projects

Wood Floor Business asked followers on Facebook what their favorite wood flooring projects from this spring were, and there were many responses, with many beautiful wood floors.

Tales From the Front

Tales From the Front: Heavy Metal Scares Everyone Involved

Tom Hanson at Warwick, R.I.-based Thomas Hanson Hardwood Flooring says he gets startled on jobs all the time when someone’s trying to get his attention while he’s deeply engrossed in sanding, but one scare really stuck with him.

Jj24 Tales From The From

WTF Moments in Sanding: Dealing with Aluminum Oxide

Some of us remember the first time we had to “try” sanding off a finish with aluminum oxide (AO) or ceramic finish—fortunately we have better options when it comes to abrasives today. Here's some advice.

For this aluminum oxide floor, Joshua Feck of Traverse Woodworks in Traverse City, Mich., started with diamond plates on his Bona Power Drive “to scratch up the surface. I’d let the plates cool while removing what’s left of the finish with 36-grit with the big machine.”

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