The Mirka Ceros 5-inch sander offers the utility of an air sander with the convenience of an electric.

One of the fringe benefits of my trip to the Popular Woodworking shop was the chance to try new tools. While Felder’s K3 Winner sliding table saw is sadly too large for my shop, I did enjoy the Mirka Ceros sander. It offers the light weight and low center of gravity of an air sander without the need for a large compressor. The top-mounted paddle switch took some getting used to (I kept setting the sander down on its top and turning it on), but the sander was comfortable in extended use. The Abranet sanding disks cut quickly, though I found them brittle when sanding where to pieces of wood joined: the edge of disk seemed to wear quickly if it got banged up, but cost is likely the tool’s largest drawback–MSRP is $525 for the sander and power unit in a Mirka-brander Systainer–though it doesn’t seem horribly unreasonable for the experience.