Sanders are devices which are commonly used for polishing, smoothing or shaping wood and are used in other surfaces too (for example plastic and metal surfaces). Most sanders are electric tool and there are many different kinds of sanders available, for instance: orbital sanders, belt sanders, disk sanders, and detail sanders. An electric sander that is meant to be used in finishing work is known to be a finishing sander.

An orbital sander otherwise is known as finishing sander and it is classified into two types, one is an orbital sander and the other is finishing sander. This sander is quite a simple device. With slow velocity and the weight positioned above the sanding pad makes the sander to move in small circular motion, so the wood surface is sanded or finished perfectly in all directions.

The second one is named as finishing sander which has a rectangular head and ¼ or ½ sheet where you can place the sandpaper depending on the surface which you have to be finished. The smaller one of the finishing sander is known as palm sanders.

A random orbital sander is also a finishing sander but not similar to an orbital sander, because it can move in two ways simultaneously. This random orbital sander has a sanding disk which makes an ellipse when spinning. Bi-directional motion of this sander is very useful to prevent circular abrasions and this particular quality of the random orbital profile sanding machine makes it a finishing sander. The only drawback of random orbital sander is that it is not equipped with various speed limits and the suitable attachment; and because of this lacking quality, this finishing sander is not called as polishing sander.

A detail sander is also named as finishing sander because of its very small size and attachments. You have many types of sander to finish the larger surface but this sander is very special as it is mostly adapted to detail some particular areas, such as concave, slot, outside and inside corner. Other than fine finish sanding properties, some detail sanders come with great sawing ability too. All final sanding tools hold their own specialty, for example pipe surface sander is specialized in sanding pipes, rails and tubes.