WEN Drywall Sander, Variable Speed with 15 ft. Hose (6369)

One of my best buys. This is an outstanding piece of equipment. I am a land lord with 8 rentals. One of my units had severe wall damage in one bedroom and ceiling damage in kitchen. Gut and replace bedroom drywall and 1/2 of ceiling in kitchen. Wasn’t looking forward to all the sanding of joints. While whining about all sanding to my wife, she said I should get one of those power sanders she had seen used on TV. Sorry, not rolling in money to buy one and went to Amazon to see just how much one might be. I came across the Wen drywall sander. My thought was, this is probably a piece of junk but it might help some. I was sooooo wrong! This is a piece of professional grade equipment. When you set it up for work, you know you have a quality tool in your hands. Heavy duty construction. The variable speed motor is heavy duty and will cause the sanding pad to cut through the toughest sanding jobs with ease. It’s “soft start” function (slower start vs full speed start) keeps you in control.The kitchen ceiling needed to be retextured but there were so many coats of paint, I couldn’t get water through to remove the texturing. With an 80 grit sanding disk and I was able to cut through the paint on the texture enough to wet the ceiling in order to scrape off the texture. Only took about 15 minutes to do the ceiling (10 x 25 kitchen), with almost no dust.It took me about 15 minutes to sand the bedroom. Light enough to work about 15 minutes continuous without a break other than to move to next wall. Again, almost zero dust in the room.Only complaint I have with the unit is the hose attachment. It doesn’t fit a standard 2” vacuum hose. Matter of fact, I haven’t found anything that it does fit. So I fixed it with the universal adapter - duct tape. Bit of a pain but that’s easy to live with the time and labor saving of the marvelous tool.Without any doubt, this sander is worth every penny of its very reasonable price. I expect this sander will be a great tool for me for many years to come. I highly recommend this product.

I was very surprised how well this sander kept the drywall compound dust under control. I read in another review that 95% of the dust was sucked up. I think it’s more like 98% of the dust. I’m very glad I bought this. I wish I would have bought a model that had a light built into it but this one did everything I needed it to do. My wife was very happy that she didn’t have to clean up drywall dust for days. It made me happy because I didn’t have to hear her complain about cleaning up drywall dust. It does get a little heavy when you’re using it. I imagine all of them get a little heavy. Which is no big deal because you should take some breaks. It did cut my sanding time into a third of what it would have taken me to do by hand and kept me clean too! I didn’t even really need to wear a mask.

The mid-mount motor product is one big tradeoff but worth the cost. It’s loud, heavy and requires a cord and a hose that are constantly getting tangled. However, the results are amazing. It does a great job and is far less messy than traditional sanding with a sponge or pole. Plus, you won’t need to hit the gym after using it. Some things to consider:1. Don’t lock the head in place, just let it float. I wish it had a little more range of motion but it’s workable.2. Even the slowest speed is pretty fast, keep the dial down at speed setting 1.3. Use the higher grit paper (120+) unless you mud like some kind of barbarian. Lower grit will remove material too quickly because the head spins so fast.4. Keep the head pushed firmly to the work surface, if it’s vibrating or making a rhythmic noise, you’re doing it wrong. Push harder to engage the head against the drywall and it will slow itself down to the correct working speed.5. When you take it off the wall, you will naturally want to flip it over and rest it like a weed whacker, don’t do this, keep the head up so all the dust doesn’t fall out until you’re ready to dump it.6. The suction is passable, but not great (still way better than by hand). You will still need to wear a mask or set up a negative pressure system. Make sure your vacuum has good suction.7. The switch is just an awful design. Familiarize yourself with it so you can shut it off quickly if needed.8. The speed selector moves too freely and you will accidentally adjust it, be listening for the speed change knowing that the vacuum will also be loud making it hard to hear.Again, despite all this it’s a solid product suitable for weekend warriors and good purchase for a sizable project. Pros would want to pay more for something quieter, lighter and with better suction, but you can’t beat this for the price.