Detail sander from an electric toothbrush

[grsjax]

Picked up a cheap Oral-B 500 toothbrush on ebay and made an oscillating detail sander from it.  Pulled the bristles out of the head and glued a small piece of sandpaper on it.  Tried it out on the hull of a model I am working on and it worked great.  Produces a nice smooth surface.  I am not going to trying using coarse sandpaper with it as I think it would be to aggressive.  The head oscillates at a high rate.

[druxey]

I have used an old electric toothbrush with fine polishing powder (pumice) to buff up carvings.

[allanyed]

Time to replace the old one which will become a sanding device momentarily.

Thanks for the tips guys!!!!!

[Cold_Fire]

Hi to all!

If you want a slightly bigger sander that works like charm for models you can make it using Philips sneaker cleaner or an old Philips shoe polisher. These items can be very easily converted to a custom sander. I have one made with the shoe polisher, I made a custom part and a mold, then I made copies of the part with resin. In this way you can have many replaceable heads with different sandpaper grits.

[modeller_masa]

I'm not sure I've introduced this tool here before...

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10605990

This is more like professional polisher, and I guarantee that it pretty works well although limited usage... There are some cheaper copy polisher on the ebay from $40.

 

 

If you purchase the chinese version, you can change speed of the sander using a variable voltage controller.  

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  I'll apologize in advance, but I wonder if anyone in the forum has ever tried putting sandpaper on a vibrator to fair planking ...  just a crazy idea.

 

  I mean, it could do well for the inside curves below the stern, but I'm not sure whether I dare ask the Admiral if she has one handy.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Snug Harbor Johnny
clarification