Sanding wheels and a tool maker merger

During my years in making things with wood I’ve been concerned with sanding. Almost anything we make from wood needs sanding to remove tools marks, to bring the wood to a high polish before applying finish, to make a carving smooth.
I’m fortunate to have a CarveWright machine and I really like the work it does. I also have a Legacy Ornamental Mill and it does things for me I can’t do with hand tools.
Oh yes, there are some highly skilled woodworkers who can make a tapered, spiral piece by hand. I congratulate them. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, I need machine to help me do the things I can’t.
But the point is, whether by hand or machine, these things often need to be sanded to remove sharp corners and produce a smoother, more refined look.
So I’ve been looking into ways to do that in a less labor intensive way.
Flap wheels, sanding mops, sponge sanding blocks and even the little Scotch Brite radial bristle discs (expensive and short lived), have been tried, each with a measure of success.
But I recently found Black & Decker Nylon Wheels.
They’re 3’ in diameter. That’s a big difference from the little 7/8” Scotch Brite discs.
Doing a web search for them, I discovered that they normally sell at retail for about eight bucks apiece. But I made a visit to a Black & Decker factory outlet store and found them for $1.79!
So if this is something you may find useful, Find a factory outlet store near you and get some of these neat sanding wheels at a great bargain price.

Now, the merger:
Just this morning I picked up on the news item telling about Stanley Tools and Black & Decker merging. Stanley stockholders will have about a .5% advantage in the new corporation.
They seem to think they will cut costs significantly while producing the same product lines.
Let’s hope they don’t go down in quality.
Having a tool company manufacturing in the USA is good for the job situation, but mergers like this sometimes save on costs by reducing the work force.
Here’s me, hoping these two USA companies will continue to make their tools here and not overseas.

d

-- If a man says something in the forest and there's no woman to hear it, is he still wrong?