Manual for RS2e

[USAF Flyboy]

Addictive substances tend to work like this.

At some point the wife is going to notice a bunch of new green and white tool boxes in the shop along with the new fancy shop vac that we use with the sanders.  Since she uses the sanders for our side business, I am going to have to come clean.  Hopefully she hops on the bandwagon.  My reasoning will be the excellent dust extractor.  Yeah, that't it!

 

[Michael Kellough]

Addictive substances tend to work like this.

At some point the wife is going to notice a bunch of new green and white tool boxes in the shop along with the new fancy shop vac that we use with the sanders.  Since she uses the sanders for our side business, I am going to have to come clean.  Hopefully she hops on the bandwagon.  My reasoning will be the excellent dust extractor.  Yeah, that't it!

Lower noise and HEPA, should make it an easy sale.

 

[squall_line]

Addictive substances tend to work like this.

At some point the wife is going to notice a bunch of new green and white tool boxes in the shop along with the new fancy shop vac that we use with the sanders.  Since she uses the sanders for our side business, I am going to have to come clean.  Hopefully she hops on the bandwagon.  My reasoning will be the excellent dust extractor.  Yeah, that't it!

And if she doesn't, some random visitor who recognizes the color scheme of the Systainers will make an off-handed remark that starts a similar conversation.  DAMHIK.

 

[luvmytoolz]

The other great thing about the RS2E is it has clips so you can buy rolls of normal sandpaper and cut them up and clip them to the base. Very handy.

That is very handy.  I will have to research the best rolls to purchase

I'd be careful on this option, my personal preference is to just use the Stickfix abrasives. With Stickfix you just easily swap out grits and because of the Velcro backing, the sandpaper always remains flat on the pad.
When using clamped abrasives you need to "pull" the abrasive around the pad ends and sometimes it isn't fully in intimate contact with the pad. How much contact the abrasive makes with the pad is determined by how tight you can pull the abrasive sheet.

For me I have no choice here as my sander is 40+ years old and is on the 2nd or third base with the velcro long gone. A replacement base seems almost impossible to find, the 2 last ones I bought were advertised as RS2E but the mounting holes didn't quite line up so it's or a different sander or maybe mine is just so old and the very first model it was changed?

But anyway, using the clips is extremely trivial to pull the sheet tight and clamp, it's how all the other brand sanders worked at the time.

 

[USAF Flyboy]

Update: The RS2e ended up virtually new.  The guy I bought it from purchased it a few years ago for a larger job to refinish a bunch of table tops in a bar.  He opened it up and ran it for a few minutes and decided to do the job with his Rotex and the RS2 was never used again.  It looks completely unused and he says the piece of sandpaper on it is the one it came with from the factory.  It came with the Systainer and a punch.

I paid $225 and feel like I got a decent deal.  Can't wait for the CT36 I bought from the recon site to arrive.

 

[Alanbach]

From what I can see Festool still produces stick fix pads for the RS 2 as well as a full line of Granat paper for that sander as well as some of the Rubin II.

 

[RonMiller]

I just used my RS2e again yesterday and was once again impressed with how quickly it can flatten boards. I appreciate my other Festool sanders but this beast really is a great place to start sizeable pieces of work.

 

[squall_line]

I paid $225 and feel like I got a decent deal.

That's a candidate for "understatement of the month".