Wood can be quite uncomfortable at times, especially if it is rough and unkempt. Such wood, if used for the purpose of flooring, could lead to a hard and uncomfortable surface facing the roof of the house. The presence of solid hardwood flooring could translate into the need of some floor sanding. The work is easily done using a machine, or it could even be done by hand. All that one requires is a drum floor sander, vibrating sander, and an edge sander.

The drum floor sander comprises of the sander, a large dust bag, and a drum to which large sheets of sanding paper are attached. The sandpaper is mounted on a cylindrical drum. The drum rotates on an axis parallel to the plane of the floor. The drum sander does the dirty job when it does away with the undesirable spots and stains off the floor. However, one must be very careful not to use the drum sander with a lot of pressure if one wishes to avoid permanent grooves in the wood. The drum sander might strip off some of the wood!

The application of the wood sander leaves some raffish edges on the surface of the wood. These are smoothened with the vibrating sander. This is approximately the same size as a drum sander. It comes with additional dust bag. The vibrating sander comes as an improvement over the drum sander. The device is a bit lighter, and, it is a bit easier to move. Moreover, chances of creating raffish edges on the wood are less.

A large orbital sander could be used as an alternative. Both the vibrating sander and the orbital sander take care of putting a smooth polish to the wood surface.

The edge sander is the last tool used in the process. This is used for reaching out to places that are difficult to reach over the vibrating or large orbital sander.

The edge sander is a hand-held tool. Like the other two, it too has a dust bag, and also an orbital motion. It is, however, heavy and expensive. It has all the power needed to sand down hardwood floor.