Makita 9741 Wheel Sander

This sander absolutely met my expectations. I am using it to clean up a very large order of dried rough-sawn redwood, who's rough appearance I wanted to maintain. The lumber had a lot of oxidation on the surface, as happens with all wood over time, as well as random particles from the environment. Applying any finish to this wood requires that the surface be cleaned if a quality result is to be likely. Pressure washing is a typical approach, but not appropriate for my situation. Sanding with even a 40 grit sandpaper virtually wipes out the wood character.I started using a wire broom style push brush. It worked extremely well but was far too labor intensive. The amount of loose material that came off the lumber was unexpectedly high, and it left the boards just right with all their character.I hunted for other solutions and found this. This thing does a great job and it has paid for itself a few times over for me, with the stock nylon brush. It doesn't go down deep, I still follow up with the wire push brush but just a few strokes and I'm done. The makita removes a bit of the wood character but hardly noticeable. I don't think it brings out any grain ... I think it mostly just removes particles that have little to no bond with the wood core. If you apply finish to these particles, I think it would be better to have a little grain removed than have the finish fail over time.The sander has a nice little depth adjuster in front that allows you to control the pressure the brush puts own as it spins, I think you might be able to optimize this dynamic to get the cleaning function and raise the grain a little but I didn't try, I had full pressure all the way since that was very quick and gave me a pleasing result.

I bought this to clean up reclaimed barn boards for a couple furniture projects. Reclaimed lumber usually coated with layers of dried dirt, loose debris and other stuff.. After all most of it comes from the inside of barns where the animals lived..... I needed to clean up the dirt and grime but definitely wanted to keep the patina and character of the wood. After an hour of wire brushing by hand, I ordered this machine from Amazon. Pricey, it seems to be the only on the market at this time, but it came within two days (Amazon Prime) and did exactly what I wanted it to do without the arm breaking labor in about 1/3 of the time. Great machine and seems really well built. Use it outside hooked up to a vacuum , and do your lungs and sinuses a favor and wear a dusk mask. It creates clouds of dust. I have not tried to raise grain or to sculpt with it, but I don't think its designed to do those things. Stick to what its made for and it will work well for those tasks. If you have a bunch of old lumber that needs to be cleaned without ruining the patina, this is what you need.

The media could not be loaded. This product was used to help removed excessive amounts of old flaking paint from reclaimed wood doors. I did not want to ruin/remove the patina so much that the visual of the final product would be ruined if I sanded it. This product exceeded my expectation and completely blows its lacking rival product by Porter Cable out of the water. Noise is minimal given its use. Dust is also minimal and can be collected by a vacuum dust system if used indoors. The only drawback is that it is a one-trick pony in that this is all that I will ever use it for. Coupled with both it's cost and cost of additional/replacement brushes is excessive and will divert interested buyers towards the rival product. If you are not dissuaded by the cost, then you will not be disappointed with the results.

I bought the wire wheel for my Makita 9741 Wheel Sander. It is a quick way to open the grain or age wood in appearance. It works great on larger flatter areas but not so well into small recesses ( to get into tight areas I use a similar but much smaller wire wheel in a 1/4 inch die grinder). It's pretty much useless on tight grained woods like mahogany or poplar, but gives a great old and weatherbeaten look to more open grain woods like oak or ash. I have also found that I can make inexpensive pine or cedar look as if it sat in the desert sun for 50 years in a matter of minutes. Experiment with different types of wood till you find the results that you like. The abrasive nylon brush supplied with the sander may be useful for aging a painted finish, but is useless for aging bare wood. The sander itself has functioned flawlessly and wheel changes are simple to accomplish. This tool allows me to work on complex shapes such as moldings but as above it wont get into small recesses.

Mixed feelings, would be so much better if someone, preferably Makita, would make an extra coarse nylon brush. I use this to clean up and expose the patina of very old lumber, both hand hewn beams and sawn lumber at least 70 years old. It is the best thing I've used for the job and the only alternative I know of is tedious wire brushing by hand. This tool *can* be a *bit* aggressive on soft woods but not so aggressive that you can easliy go through the patina.Re durability..I have used this for a year, probably on about 50 8x8x8' beams, and performance has slowed down enough that I just ordered a new brush. ( $170 on amazon and there is a 20% promo on at this time.) I charge by time so this expense is something like sandpaper to me, gotta be factored in, hard as it is to pay $170 for a brush.Re; other uses... I would not recommend buying this tool to distress wood.I have tried this on new lumber...oak, southern yellow pine, poplar etc... to try to make a cool distressed surface and it found that it did very little...it was disappointing and left me wishing for a much more aggressive brush. There is a wire brush but most reviews imply that it just burnishes the wood surface... I was not willing to try that.But if you need to clean up old lumber, keep the texture as close as possible to the original, and your time is money...this is the best thing I have found. Dust collection is very good hooked up to a good shop vac, though I did have to mess around to connect it to my ancient Porter cable shop vac.