The $20 Air Sander That Fits Where Your Floor Sander Can't

The Problem

Refinishing stairs stalls at the balusters. The big machines handle the field of each tread, but the last inches around every spindle are hand-scraping territory — and even the corner attachment for a flooring edger often won't fit between stair treads or tight landings, and can't get all the way up next to a baluster or work its outside face.

The Technique

The tool most DIYers have never seen: a small orbital air sander — pneumatic, run off an air compressor.

• Heads come in one-, two-, and three-inch sizes; the two-inch is the workhorse for baluster work (only spindles tighter than that give it trouble).
• The small head gets tight to the bottom of every baluster, inside and outside faces, and into the tread corners — the exact places every other machine leaves for hand work.
• They're cheap enough to treat as consumables: roughly $20 to $50 online, and one working floor pro carries three on the van at any given time.

On a full staircase, the time saved around the spindles is, in his words, unreal — a rough pass gets tight to everything, and the detail work stops being the day's bottleneck.

What You'll Need

An air compressor to drive it (these are pneumatic, not battery), the sander itself, and sanding pads in your grit progression for its head size.