Proxon Pen Sander

Proxon Sander
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

I'm sad enough to have a favourite power tool - a Powerbase cordless detail sander bought from a car boot sale for 2 quid. It's seen loads of use on wooden stuff, filler in the campervan and even model boat hulls. When it dies it will be replaced straight away and I'll be willing to spend proper money on it too - that's how good it is.

Sadly for much model making work it's too large. I want a tiddly version - which is very nearly what we have here.

The Proxon pen sander is a miniature 12v electric tool about the size of a fat marker pen although perhaps a bit longer. It has different shaped interchangable plastic heads and self adhesive sanding pads (180, 240 & 400 grit). Power comes from either Proxon transformer or in my case, a Minicraft one using an adaptor lead plugged into the long coily power cable. Initial impressions are that build quality is excellent.

I bought a couple of spare packs of sanding pads as I didn't realise that there were a few sheets in the sander. The trader they came from tried to dissuade me from this as he says you can use normal sandpaper held on with double sided tape for a fraction of the cost.

My test piece is an IP Engineering coach which has panels milled in plywood. These are nice but on the ends the milling process has left some raised lines. I could have tried carving these off but would probably gouge the surface, or hand sanding, but I had a new tool I wanted to try !

The sander was fitted with a square pad that works perpendicular to the tool, other work in line or at a shallow angle. Fitting it with the coarsest grit was easy once the pad was released from the sheet with a knife blade. The pad just sticks to the tool. Changing the tool is just a twist of the end and it pulls out to be swapped.

In use the head moves side to side about 2mm in each direction. The vibrations in the handle can be felt but aren't bad. A full size power sander is a lot worse. There is only one control, an on/off switch. I found working easy enough and fairly quickly flattened the raised areas. The sawdust created was fine so wear a mask if you are doing a lot - but didn't fly around everywhere. The tool did heat up more than expected but this seemed worse on lower speed settings. It was never even close to too hot to handle. Noise was no worse than any other mini power tool and my cat happily slept through it.



This is a handy little tool. Assuming the tool heads are available separately I can see myself making custom ones by chopping the plastic around. For cleaning up inside the thinner mouldings this would be fantastic. For working in confined area this is certainly easier and less knuckle scraping than hand sanding.

My local Proxon stockist is Dolls Domain, Leamington.