Wow, I’ve been busy the past couple of days. My garden gate was in real need of a finish overhaul. I finished one side but because the spar varnish finish is so hard to remove I decided to get a new sander. Here is a picture of how bad the gate had gotten.

Before pictures. First one I had already started to sand the back of the gate. You can see numerous grayed areas where water has gotten behind the finish coat.

Below you can see I should have recoated it before last winter set in and I wouldn’t of had to refinish the whole thing.

Below shows bad finish failure. I made this gate out of western cedar so it doesn’t really need to be finished but I wanted to keep the pretty cedar color if I could and have a finished look to it. So much of the gate had grayed already I decided to sand it down to new wood. There are cracks in the wood where the finish has failed. I don’t know if the wood cracked because the finish failed or did the finish fail because the wood cracked? Hmmm.

I have a large Sears belt sander but it is too heavy to use on a vertical gate.

So I opted to buy a Porter Cable compact belt sander. It is 2-1/2″ by 14″ belt size. and is 5 amps. It weighs about 8 pounds. I started using it on the gate and it was really going good at removing the varnish when I noticed oil was leaking from it. I took it back and got another one. (so many trips back up the hill to Summit and I hate going up there and it is such a waste of time.) This time it worked great. It didn’t feel heavy at all. I guess because it is driving in a forward motion up the gate. I got most of the spar urethane off and then took off the handle in the front to get closer to the bottom of the gate. I still had to take out my orbital sander to get the very bottom. It would have been easier to take the whole gate off but the gate is large, and heavy and I didn’t want to ruin the new finish I had just finished on the other side if I were to lay it down.

One thing I didn’t like about this sander is how hot it gets. I had leather gloves on and still had to shut it off because I couldn’t hold it anymore. I read a few reviews that the same thing happens to them. I wonder, though, if I had a vacuum hooked up to the dust port if that wouldn’t bring enough air through the system to keep it cooler. But it sure did work good.

Between the two sanders, I made good progress. I had to sand off the stenciled vines and leaves from the gate so I could refinish the whole thing. I still have to lightly sand it down and give it a final coat. Then I’ll decide if I want to stencil or wait until next year. Hopefully I’ll be finished with it tomorrow and get a picture of the finished product.