# Power tool for sanding toe rail



## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

I need to re-varnish the wood trim on the outside of the boat. The toe-rail is only about 2 by 2 and so it isn't very easy to power sand it with standard orbital sanders or even a finishing sander. Can anyone suggest a power tool (and appropriate attachment) that might work effectively here? The job would be to remove any black staining, old peeling varnish and to smooth any surfaces that are already bare.
Last time, I used hand scrapers and sandpaper and I'm hoping someone can suggest an easier way.
Ross


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## sea_hunter (Jul 26, 2000)

Unless you've got a tender hand do it the same way you did lastly. You could try a multi-tool of some type; either Fein or HomeDepot brand.


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## SVTatia (May 7, 2007)

Ross

I'll be watching this post as I'll be doing the same on my toerail.
So far I am leaning towards the 1/4 sheet sander as it has 4 flat sides, even though it is orbital, it should be able to do the job. Problem is when you get too close to the hull, and my idea is to mask the fiberglass with the wide blue masking tape then cover this tape with gorilla tape. This way the fiberglass will not be harmed. Reason for the blue tape? Gorilla tape is very sticky and may leave a residue, with the blue tape underneath it would be easy to peel back when the job is finished.


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## SchockT (May 21, 2012)

I have seen some nice little mini belt sanders that use a 1" wide belt that might do the trick. A dremmel with a flap wheel might do the trick too. Go to your local tool shop and have a look around!


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Going to tool stores is on my to-do list (always drool when I go) but I was hoping that someone had 'been there done that' successfully. 
Love those pictures. 
Ross


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## SchockT (May 21, 2012)

Yeah that Bosch one looks promising!


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

Ya know, a citrus or soy stripper, along with a set of sharp cabinet scrappers will do a excellent job, then it's a easy fine sand job

But, a drumel multimax is a handy tool


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## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

SchockT said:


> I have seen some nice little mini belt sanders that use a 1" wide belt that might do the trick. A dremmel with a flap wheel might do the trick too. Go to your local tool shop and have a look around!


Those thing will eat a toerail in seconds - don't do it. I had one of the Makitas 'cause it seemed like a cool tool - it was the most useless power tool I ever owned. There must be a reason it was invented but I never found out what it was.

Face facts - the job you describe is a hand job (pun intended) - there is no power tool appropriate to it I'm afraid.


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## PorFin (Sep 10, 2007)

A Fein MultiMaster (or another company's equivalant) will do the job, but you may not save yourself much time. I usually reach for my Fein first when tackling projects, but when doing my own caprails I found that the old fashioned methods were in fact faster and yielded better results.

I'm with SJB and PP on this one -- combination of a sharp card scraper and where necessary Citrus Strip. If the finish is particularly stubborn, a heat gun will come in handy.


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## Cherp (Aug 3, 2011)

Those makita power files do what a rough rasp used to do. They are good for rough shaping. Mind you, i still find plenty of uses for the rasp too.


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## Tim R. (Mar 23, 2003)

Forget the dedicated sanders. Buy a Fein multi master and now you have a tool that will work well for this job plus many others.


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## asdf38 (Jul 7, 2010)

treilley said:


> Forget the dedicated sanders. Buy a Fein multi master and now you have a tool that will work well for this job plus many others.


I second the multi-tool. I bought one for general sanding and it's perfect for getting into tight spaces on boats and is probably he best sander for doing a narrow rail. On top of that you can slap on a whole variety of blades and scrapers. Fein is very expensive but high quality, other versions are $100 or less. If I were buying a plug-in I'd look at dremel's version first.

Personally I have milwaukee's M12 version along with the M12 Dremel and M12 right angle drill. I'm a fan of Milwaukee for having all these tools in one line sharing batteries. I believe the multi-tool comes with two batteries which will let you run continuously if you need too.


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## mm2187 (Sep 8, 2011)

depending on how much varnish you on the toe rail and the condition of it i find that a putty knife and a heat gun work very well. It does not take much heat for it to bubble then just run the putty knife over it. That being said use panters tape and a metal putty knife to protect the deck, you dont want to damage the paint.


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## Barquito (Dec 5, 2007)

I just took mine off and sanded it in the comfort of my basement... only took a few months to get it off, and a few more to get it back on... no problem. Seriously, I'm launching Monday. My untainted advice would be to glass it over.


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## captflood (Jan 1, 2011)

GREETINGS EARTHLINGS; Power tools when you can just cut some left over glass and scrape of the old stuff the old fashioned way without removing any wood. Power tools are to harsh and inflexible for a job that fine I use a Sandvik side scraper and sharpen the blades when needed make sure you know what way the grain is going and enjoy. AS ALWAYS GO SAFE.


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Thanks for the various replies so far. A number of people have suggested Citrustrip. I tried various paint strippers last time but they weren't very effective. Never tried Citrustrip so I'll check that out. Have other people had success with this product?

Also, I looked at their website and saw they have a 'paint remover wash'. Any body used this after the stripper?

I'll defintely check around for an available heat gun. I don't want to buy anything unless it works but if it does the job and makes it easier, I'll shell out the bucks.

Thanks again for all the feedback,
Cheers,
Ross


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## jtopping (Apr 9, 2010)

The Admiral used a mouse sander, B&D from Home Depot this summer and got good results. Sand, very fine bronze wool, Cetol for finish coat. Used same process for the grab rails on the cabintop last summer.


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## SawWhet (Mar 1, 2008)

Dremel Multi max is the tool of choice,start with 80 grit paper then 220 to finish off.
Note there are different model MMax units go with the heaviest duty unit --mine is on our boat or I could give you the model #(just finished cleaning up seat trim on our Ben 321


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## baboon (Aug 7, 2008)

I took my teak toe rails down to bare wood 2 yrs ago. After trying a few options I had the best luck using a cheap heat gun (under $20 at big box store) and very good quality scrapers. The scrapers are available at better marine stores and woodworking shops, these are not the paint scapers you get at the hardware store. They will leave a very smoth surface that can be hand sanded to finish the job quickly. Carfull use of a small finish sander with fine grit paper worked too, the Black and Decker mouse worked very well. I found any power sander took too long on the old varnish, but also tended to take off too much material it got close to bare wood.


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## Ritchard (Aug 15, 2011)

Ross,

See Cdn Tire this week for the Dremel version of the multicrafter tool on sale for $47.99. It makes an excellent detail sander, plus all the other cool things it does. It won't last as long as the superb Fein version of the tool, but costs about 1/8 as much.

Dremel Multi-Max Oscillating Tool | Canadian Tire


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## Jgbrown (Mar 26, 2012)

SloopJonB said:


> Those thing will eat a toerail in seconds - don't do it. I had one of the Makitas 'cause it seemed like a cool tool - it was the most useless power tool I ever owned. There must be a reason it was invented but I never found out what it was.
> 
> Face facts - the job you describe is a hand job (pun intended) - there is no power tool appropriate to it I'm afraid.


There's a guy I work with who has one of the Makita tools there. He uses it for shaping holes etc after he cuts through a hull. Great tool for the right job.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

I highly recommend against power-anything for this job, no matter how sexy looking. They are expensive, noisy, and inflexible. The are extremely difficult to control and the result is loss of wood along with the old finish. And in the end, you will still have to scrape the details.

As a furniture maker with 25 years experience and a ton of experience with this job in particular, I strongly recommend a cabinetmaker's card scraper in a holder of your making or one available at woodworking stores. I use a holder made from a 2" x 3" x 3/4" oak block with a handle set at a 90 degree angle to the block. It's my grandfather's design and has worked for almost 100 years. They key is a nice, sharp hook in the scraper edge. PM me for instructions on how to set one in less than 2 minutes with only a file and screwdriver.

When I did my toe rail 2 years ago, several people stopped by the boat and marveled at the speed and quiet at which I was progressing. I did the port, starboard, and stern toerails in about 3 hours down _to_ the wood but not _into_ the wood. Can't be done as accurately with any electric sander. Trust me. And stay away from the chemical strippers too. They'll just waste your time and wallet.

Cabinet Scrapers are one of the least appreciated, most effective tools in the woodworkers tool box. IMO, too many novice woodworkers buy everything electric in the false assumption that they have to be faster-better. Not true, just a question of picking the most effective weapon.


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## ParadiseParrot (Oct 6, 2010)

After several costly mistakes I learned not to use power sanders on anything like that.
One slip and you have a gouge ruining a rounded surface.


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## oysterman23 (Jul 22, 2011)

Sabreman
Amen to the effective and poorly appreciated furniture scraper..and for detailing close to the glass a japanese finger chisel or...an angle chisel drawn nearly perpendicular to the surface backwards...
In any case the fresh oils need to be rinsed with a wash for a lasting bond with most finishes. I'm using semco natural this go round...given up on theshiny high maintanance stuff god I miss the old Woodlife.....
Cod


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

I wipe uncoated teak with a terry cloth and acetone or lacquer thinner to remove oils. I turn the cloth frequently and use a new one if it gets discolored with oils. Never had a finish fail using these simple techniques.

I use Cetol natural and sometimes Cetol gloss. IMO, it's the easiest, most robust teak finish to apply. But I will admit to a sigh when I see the glass finish on a Hinckley's teak.


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## Ritchard (Aug 15, 2011)

oysterman23 said:


> Sabreman
> Amen to the effective and poorly appreciated furniture scraper..and for detailing close to the glass a japanese finger chisel or...an angle chisel drawn nearly perpendicular to the surface backwards...
> In any case the fresh oils need to be rinsed with a wash for a lasting bond with most finishes. I'm using semco natural this go round...given up on theshiny high maintanance stuff god I miss the old Woodlife.....
> Cod


I cleaned up all the teak this spring and applied Semco Natural brown. I really like the look, and a touchup coat (every 90 days?) of the whole boat takes a half hour with a rag and a little plastic tub of the stuff.


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

I do our boat annually and that's fine enough for me. I clean/scuff the teak with a Scotch pad and lay on a coat of Cetol with a china bristle chip brush. It's not one of my furniture grade finishes, but I have to draw the line somewhere. The interior is another story. 

I like applying finish. It's relaxing


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

Knowing ( by your post(s) ) ,that you do woodwork for a living, I still have to ask, are you doing your annual maintenance coat with clear only ?


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## SlowButSteady (Feb 17, 2010)

I often use hand scrapers and the judicious use of a heat gun for such jobs. It actually works surprisingly fast once you get the hang of it.


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## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

Sabreman said:


> I like applying finish. It's relaxing


Applying varnish can become quite Zen-like. Prep work, not so much.


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

> are you doing your annual maintenance coat with clear only ?


Nah. I can't bring myself to do it. I use Cetol Natural. I figure that the slight coloring gives it some extra UV protection. I've used the clear on the swim ladder treads and it looked ok but wasn't that much nicer than Cetol natural. Gloss finish on the treads isn't a really great idea so I don't do that anymore. Meanwhile I have a can of Gloss getting rusty. I can't bring myself to throw it away. What a quandary.

I'm not a full time professional woodworker. But I do commissions if the project interests me.

Mark Maiocco Woodworking and Design It's not about matching the carpet ....


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## brucemoody (Jul 2, 2011)

I've only started on my toe rail with a scraper, so perhaps I don't have a say here. However, I keep a blade sharpening stone nearby and use it - often. When the scraper is sharp, the vanish comes off with a reasonable amount of effort.


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Thanks to all those who made suggestions regarding the toe-rail. I eventually tried out a heat-gun, an oscillating sander and cabinet scrapers, along with the usual paint scrapers and sand paper. I thought I would share my experiences and thoughts with you. 

First, a word about the job itself. The toe-rail on my boat consists of a top piece, or cap, about 2 inches wide and ½ inch thick, and an outboard piece about 2.5 inches wide. I’ll call this the rub-rail, though it isn’t really. This means there are three different surfaces to deal with
an inboard vertical section of ½ an inch, 
a top, horizontal section of about 2 inches and 
an outboard vertical section of ~3 inches (cap + rub-rail)

The problem with the outboard vertical section is that sometimes the cap sticks out a bit from the rub-rail and sometimes it’s flush. Furthermore, the rub-rail sometimes sticks out from the hull and in some places is actually recessed a bit from the lip of the hull/deck joint. Nowhere is there a nice, flat vertical surface to clean.

Now my experiences with the different approaches. I’ve broken the rest into 3 messages that people can comment on the different approaches separately.


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Heat gun with putty knife and paint scrapers. This worked very well. The heat gun softens the varnish and sometimes causes it to bubble and lift. Scraping it with a hand-held paint scraper is very easy and can be done very carefully with no force against the wood, hence no sudden slips. When the surface was nice and flat, I used a 2” scraper. When it was not, I used a smaller, 1”, scraper. I found it effective on the outboard, vertical surface because I didn’t have to worry about the uneven joint of the cap and the rub-rail, or the jutting sections of the hull.
However, what ELSE was being heated? I wondered about caulking etc. overheating and becoming weakened. I don’t think this happened but it was impossible to tell. The work is somewhat dangerous in that metal scrapers, putty knives etc. and metal parts of the boat attached to or near the toe rail retain their heat for a while and can burn you. I lightly burned my cheek (the one on the face!), of all places, with a small putty knife when extricating myself from the shrouds and lifelines after bending myself into pretzel trying to reach a difficult part of the wood near the jib sheet traveller. The plastic handle on one scraper melted. I had to adjust my method after I saw this. Also dangerous because you are using 120 V AC near the water. Don’t drop your tool, and, especially, don’t fall in with it. I always feel nervous using AC electric tools on the dock or boat.


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Oscillating tool with triangular sanding pad (like a Fein or a Dremel). This actually worked well too. The small tool is easy to handle and the motion does not lead to sudden slips. It will slip off narrow surfaces and so when I did the inside part of the toe rail I put a piece of metal flashing in a gap between the word trim and the deck. The tool can result in too much wood being removed, though. The key is to check often (wipe and look) and not to use any pressure at all, just the weight of the machine itself. That uneven cap/rub rail joint created a problem since I didn’t want to sand everything down so that the two parts became flush because I might sanding away the last remaining caulking between the two. Selecting the right grade of sand paper is important, obviously. See previous post for the danger related plug-in power tools.


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## RossC32 (Jul 8, 2007)

Cabinet scrapers: When the surface was easy to get at and not concave or convex, a cabinet scraper worked very well IF I set it up the “hook” just right. When I got everything right, the old Cetol just peeled off in lovely shavings. However, I had trouble with setting up the ‘hook’. Even when I thought I had done everything the same at either end of a scraper, sometimes one end was far more effective than the other. Also, I think the scrapers I got were too thick. I purchased a couple of 1 mm scrapers from Lee Valley because the website suggested these were the right thing for paint scraping. I think thinner would have been better because I could have flexed the scraper a little more when doing slightly concave or convex surfaces. The coaming covers in particular were a problem. They looked like nice flat surfaces but it was clear from the way the shavings came off that they were more undulating than flat. The larger scrapers were no good on the outboard vertical surfaces where the cap and the rub rail were not flush and the hull lip extended past the rub-rail. I used ‘mini’ scrapers here, occasionally, with some success.


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

> When I got everything right, the old Cetol just peeled off in lovely shavings.


Yup. That's how it's supposed to work. I tend to make specialty scrapers in whatever profile that I need. Sometimes, it's a concave 1" scraper or 1" convex. The variations are infinite. I tend to use a convex blade for 80% of what I scrape, rotating it toward the edge if I need a fine line.



> a cabinet scraper worked very well IF I set it up the "hook" just right. When I got everything right, the old Cetol just peeled off in lovely shavings. Even when I thought I had done everything the same at either end of a scraper, sometimes one end was far more effective than the other.


If you stick at it, you will be able to set the hook reliably. It's just a matter of practice and I had the same problem at first and nearly abandoned the tool.

The old woodworkers like my grandfather could fly through a job like a toerail. Both my father and grandfather warned me away from exclusive power tool use - many jobs are wrecked by power tools in inexperienced hands. The quiet and efficiency of a well tuned scraper, like a well tuned plane, is a thing of beauty. And you have total control.


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## Minnewaska (Feb 21, 2010)

A little late to the party here. 

Have you ever walked down a dock and seen a varnish job on a boat that just looked incredibly perfect? They were done by hand. Scrapers, then course sandpaper followed by fine sandpaper. No cheating, if you want a quality job, and everyone can tell.

Machines can and will subtly contort a rounded edge or put a wave in a long flat line.


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## CorvetteGuy (Jun 4, 2011)

Black and |Decker makes a small vibrating sander with small flat finger like attachments, concave and convex attachments also which is used in sanding spindles in funiture ect. might do the job.


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## Seaduction (Oct 24, 2011)

Having tried most of the methods discussed here, my preference is for stripper/scraper followed by light bleaching where necessary and then sanding lightly. The pic of the stern cap rail is cetol light with gloss overcoat. The seat is the older original cetol with gloss overcoat. I'm slowly redoing everything in the cetol light with gloss topcoat.


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## BELLATRIX1965 (Jan 2, 2007)

Sabreman: Any chance that you would enlighten us with some scraper tips/hints? I agree - nothing beats a sharp scraper; the problem is that few people own (or properly use) a good, sharp file with which to dress it!

Your recommendations for where to buy scrapers and how to tune them, please?? What size/cut of file is your favorite? Thanks!



Sabreman said:


> Yup. That's how it's supposed to work. I tend to make specialty scrapers in whatever profile that I need. Sometimes, it's a concave 1" scraper or 1" convex. The variations are infinite. I tend to use a convex blade for 80% of what I scrape, rotating it toward the edge if I need a fine line.
> 
> If you stick at it, you will be able to set the hook reliably. It's just a matter of practice and I had the same problem at first and nearly abandoned the tool.
> 
> The old woodworkers like my grandfather could fly through a job like a toerail. Both my father and grandfather warned me away from exclusive power tool use - many jobs are wrecked by power tools in inexperienced hands. The quiet and efficiency of a well tuned scraper, like a well tuned plane, is a thing of beauty. And you have total control.


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## Sabreman (Sep 23, 2006)

The following link shows the process for sharpening a scraper. This is pretty easy stuff. In the tutorial, they say that you can't get a good hook with a screwdriver. I disagree in that while I don't have a burnisher, a screwdriver with a chrome shank works well for me. You only need a metal file to square & flatten the edge. Nothing exotic. Available at Lowes.

Using and burnishing a cabinet scraper

Scraper stock can be purchased almost anywhere from Lowes (pretty sure) to the online stores like Rockler and Woodcraft. Sandvik is a good brand.


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## dvuyxx (Jun 23, 2009)

I used a B&D mouse sander on my toe rail. It doesn't take it down too fast. Easy to control pace. One of those belt sanders would scare me ... too fast.


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## lancelot9898 (Dec 30, 2008)

Good info Sabreman, however I do my maintenance coat with Cetrol gloss rather than the natural. I too thought that the natural had better UV protection than the gloss and started using the natural for the annual maintenance only to find out that a neighbor was using the gloss and it was holding up better than my teak. I'm now using the gloss for the maintenance coating.


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## dvuyxx (Jun 23, 2009)

Lancelot, do you mean that you just put the Cetol gloss directly on the bare wood from the start or as the maintenance coat? What is the color like?


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## lancelot9898 (Dec 30, 2008)

No, I put three coats of natural when first doing the teak. It's the annual maintenance coat that I was talking about.


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