Hi, new user, have scanned Wooden Floors threads but not found my problem addressed. I'm restoring an old farmhouse in Denmark. The kitchen floor had been VERY heavily varnished many years ago, then had lino glued-down over it. I've scrapered away the lino, but cannot lift large patches of glue. Experimenting with my belt sander, the varnish clogs the paper within seconds and without much impact on the surface. I used four 60-grit bands getting one area the size of the sander's plate down to bare wood. Impractical for a large room, of course. Even if I rent a drum sander, I suspect I'll have the same problem; huge amounts of sandpaper burned away by the melting varnish. So, what do I do? Using a heat gun and scraper would also be impractical, time-wise? It would also make the entire house stink.
Hi, you won't touch it with 60 grit. When we used to sand floors regularly we would always start with a 24 grit. You'll likely go through a fair few with a varnished floor, but it will be worth it in the end
Just to add, we would go from 24 to 40 to 80 to 120 for a really supper finish. You can stop at 80 if you feel it's good enough
Agree with above, plus round edges where i would use an edge sander, i would use a pull type scraper to remove the bulk of the varnish
Thank you guys. On to the internet to try buying 24-grit paper, then. For my belt sander? I ask because using 60-grit, the plate very quickly became too hot to touch. Is there something more practicable I should be looking for online?
As Paul suggested above, use an edge sander for the really bad areas. Hard work, but it will work! Then you want an upright sander to run over the whole floor. As the name suggests, your edge sander, is mainly designed for edges, but it is really good at getting hard areas sanded before using the upright sander. We only ever used a belt sander for specific areas which required attention. You can hire a set of edge/upright sanders for around £100 for a week.
Grateful again for input. Unfortunately, my house is in northern Denmark. Searching Hire floor sander Denmark gives me only results in England. Seems I'm fu... out of luck.
I have some 12 grit sandpaper that makes a mess but removes heavy vanish down to the wood as a last resort.
I lost interest after the snidey smarm, because every forum has one of those and they just bore me. If I wanted to hire a contractor, rather than have the satisfaction of looking every day at work I did myself, I could probably have reached that conclusion all by myself. However, in case anyone would benefit from the following information in the future: I bought a Makita 100mm belt sander, which I used with 40-grit to basically boil the varnish into Bakelite. Then I could scraper or shave-hook it off; repeating process maybe three times in the worst areas This of course left grit marks in the pine, so next I used a random orbital with 60- then 100-grit discs With wood then both ungouged and an even flatness and whiteness, I used a regular flat-plate sander with 120-grit to polish it smooth I used a 3-inch Delta sander to do all the floor/wall edges, and a multitool with a small sanding foot to get into corners I finished with two coats of two-pack yacht deck marine varnish The cost of buying the big sander was negligible, because doing so saved me the cost of hiring equipment (if I could've hired, which I couldn't). I'm extremely pleased with the results, and would post before-n'-afters if I knew how to encourage anyone else wishing to try this themselves. One last consideration: I'm closing in on 70 years of age, and could only operate the Makita for about two hours a day, after which my thighs lost all strength and I couldn't resist the machine's eager desire to scamper off across the floor. So, if you want to do this job in one weekend, don't use my formula.
