I have a question that i simply I wanted to get a professionals opinion on that comes from my background as a professional woodworker / furnituremaker.

I am about to sand out hard maple floors in my own house. My experience from my job as a professional woodworker with many years experience is that whenever I sand maple I must be very exact and careful as to what method I use. If I use a rotary or random orbit or even an vibrating type sander (no matter how fine a grit I use) I always get visible scratches in the final product. I recently sanded a maple table with a random orbit up to 22O grit and the finish product after the finish was full of pigtails. The only way I can sand maple is with the grain (beltsander or stationary drum sander) going thru all the grits up to 220.

therfore my question is this: An edger is a rotary sander. How is it that a floor finisher can sand the edges and not get rotary scrathes in the maple? Even hand sanding with a pad sander after the edger would not remove all the scratches and would put a different shapes swirly scratch in the floor. How does one accomplish this perfect sand. The floors will not be stained so this will help. I would never attempt to stain a maple floor. Also these are new floors just installed.

"Ancient Chinese secret". Actually, one does get some swirl in the floors from operating the edger. I use a back up pad and 100 as my final grit and get very little swirl. I will hand sand the edges as needed to eliminate noticable sanding marks. It is not advisable to get a mirror sanded surface on maple. Too smooth and the finishes do not penetrate and bond properly. I tell many people this. " Floors are not furniture." So any experience you may have about furniture finishing DOES NOT APPLY to floor finishing. Many folks fail to understand this but a whole set of dynamics comes into play in flooring that furniture does not need to deal with. BTW, I never, and I mean never, have a problem with sanding marks in my floors. Not that they are not there on occassion, just that they are not noticable.

Thank you Gary. Thank you for addressing my concern and for sharing your knowledge with us. Very much appreciated. Scott