Its the best grade cherry and flat along its length. No warp or skew at all. But I need to smooth it ...
Given its remarkable flatness, should I just start sanding at 40 or 60 grit and work my way up?

Yeah, your title is a bit misleading. If all you want to do is smooth, you could just sand....

But, you make it sound like it's quite rough, as is rough-sawn. If so, you might find yourself removing more than ⅛" to get it smooth, in which case you need something with more ooomph than a random orbital.

Of course, the other thing to do is to find a shop with a planer and take it there.

Festool warranty covers wear and tear and accidents, to my knowledge.  I would imagine if you called Festool, even though they did not repair it, they likely have someone who can tell you the proper belt tension.

*** BTW avoid like heck : Mirka Iridium, doesn't even adhere well to the pad (I made the mistake of buying a full range of grids, thinking it would be as good as Abranet..)

I just used some iridium P60 on my RO90 in rotex mode and didn’t have this problem at all. maybe you got a bad batch.

I was removing a polyurethane finish from a large expanse of bamboo, so it had a really hard workout.

I found it lasted very slightly longer than granat, so it just edges through for me. Both granat and iridium are insanely expensive. With the poly finish, I went through them very fast. I would have been better using P40, but I didn’t have any in stock.

(I would have been better using a larger diameter rotex too, but I didn’t have one of those in stock either )

Another option is to split the shelf in 3 with two support bars underneath, which the shelves screw into from below.


If you don’t want the join to be visible from above, then you could cover the whole shelf with something you can roll into the cabinet and glue to the shelf — maybe some of the modern linoleum products that are designed for furniture, or a thin laminate etc.

Another option is that the centre shelf slides into the others with some sort of tongue and groove. Or even make a feature of it, so it’s a central slide-out drawer, with lips on the internal angle shelves to stop things falling. 

Another thing: what’s the shelf/ shelves going to be storing? A pull-out central basket might be appropriate for towels, for example, but not for heavy shampoo bottles. Also if the corner cubbyholes (or in my suggested layout, the 2 corner shelves) are going to be storing toilet paper, or spare supplies, then if they are separated from the centre part by a lip that covers the join, that might even be useful functionally.

Not fully thought this out, but it’s food for thought (I hope).

p.s. Are you sure that the shelf can’t be put in afterwards? To me it looks like it might fit.

The availability of Festool sandpaper is a huge and rarely mentioned value-add. I've had the same problem finding pads and paper for my Bosch GET65-6N. Sitting here on a Saturday morning, I would have at least six stores I could drive to to get paper for an RO150. The only place I know of for Bosch paper would have a very limited selection if they had any at all.