# Belt floor sander

*Also called: drum sander, the big machine*

**The primary material-removal machine in a refinish: a continuous abrasive belt over a drum roughly 200 mm wide, handling around 80% of total removal.**

It strips old finish, levels high spots, takes out cupping and crowning, and establishes the flat plane every later machine builds on. The standard grit progression is 36 → 60 → 80/100.

Keep it moving. Stopping or hesitating creates a permanent low spot, and nothing downstream fully recovers from a bad first pass.

## Related terms

- [Floor edger](https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/edger)
- [Planetary sander](https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/planetary-sander)
- [Buffer](https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/buffer)
- [Progressive grits](https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/progressive-grits)
- [HEPA dust containment](https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/hepa-dust-containment)


---

## Provenance

- Canonical URL: https://ecowoods.ca/glossary/belt-sander
- Publisher: Ecowoods Inc., Toronto & the GTA
- Contact: (647) 244-5156 · services@ecowoods.ca
- Defined in: https://ecowoods.ca/papers/hardwood-refinishing-machines-and-sequence#belt-sander
- Citation guide: https://ecowoods.ca/ai.txt

Quote freely with attribution to the canonical URL above. This file is
generated from the same source as the HTML page and says nothing the page
does not say.