Dealmonger: Porter-Cable Palm Sander $34

Amazon is selling this Porter-Cable 1/4-Sheet Palm Sander for $34 with free “super saver” shipping. Though palm sanders aren’t particularly exciting tools, they do the job, and this Porter-Cable features a built-in canister dust collection system, which is a welcome plus.
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Street Pricing [Google]
I’m guessing that you have to punch holes in your 1/4 sheets of sandpaper to make the dust collection work. Also our experience has been that sanders (we use lots – including pneumatic beasts) quickly overwhelm bag or canister dust collectors. You need to either sand on a downdraft dust extraction table – or hook the sander up to a hose (usually 1 inch – adapter needed) to a quality dust extraction vacuum (we like our Feins) to make a dent in the dust.
All this said – $34 seems like a great price for a homeowner tool. I’m betting that we paid more than twice that for our first Rockwell (PC) 330 Speedbloc sanders back in the 1970’s
usually they come with a “template plate” that places the holes in the right place for you….
I got my Dewalt for under 70 and I love it. Had to get one because my Sioux belt broke and haven’t been able to find a replacement belt. The DeWalt came with a nice case to put everything in plus I can place about 6 packs of different grit sanding sheets in with the sander. Funny thing though, this Porter Cable pretty much looks like the DeWalt I have. That’s right, they’re owned by the same company. I forgot who owns who or if anybody really knows. Still love my Sioux sander.
Russ
Yeah – Black and Decker owns PC, Dewalt, Delta, DeVilbiss and some others.
Bosch – owns Skil, parts of Freud, Roto-Zip, Dremel, Vermont American and more.
TTI owns Milwaukee and Ryobi – and I think they bought out Sioux.
Then there is Emerson – producing tools under the Ridgid brandname.
In the handtool arena – giants like Danaher, Cooper, Snapon and SPX have gobbled up lots of other brands.
The independents seem to be folks like Makita, Hitachi, Fein and Festool – and specilaty companies like Virutex, Mafell et. al.
I’ve got one. It weighs about half what a speed-bloc weighs, which makes it really nice to use when working overhead. I wouldn’t write home about the dust collection with either its attached collector or an attached vac. The included collector does pick up about half the dust with the vac attached I would say about 90%. The base of the included collector functions as an adapter for attaching a vacuum.