I bought an orbital sander recently, and it's great, much faster than using a sanding block for minor cosmetic drywall sanding. But the dust is out of control. Does anyone have tips on how to lessen this problem?

It's a black and decker, five inch disk.

The better you get at applying drywall mud, the less sanding you have to do.Work on increasing your skill and you won't have to send much at all.

There is a pre-filter bucket that you fill w water and vac thru that to grab dust. The sander hose end sticks down in the bucket in water like a straw and the vac end a attaches to the lid. The vac sucks air from the top pulling the dust into the water. You can diy This too

"Wet sand" it, I use wet rugs or sponge (grout sponge). I only dry sand to finish mud coat, by then, there is not much to sand and there is little dust.

If you need to sand that much off ,you should buy an extra coarse sanding block to do the rough sanding. Then use a medium or fine grit sanding block for finish sanding.

We use sanding screens on poles, you can duck tape the vac nozzel under the pad and it catches most if it. The fudt falls mostly down instead of flying all over.

I tape the shop vac hose to the exhaust outlet on the random orbit sander when sanding wood. (DeWalt) For drywall, not sure if that would work.

For drywall, I have the sanding tool with replaceable screens that attaches to the shop vac hose, but its powered by me. I’ve learned to use a wide taping knife, so there isn’t so much material to remove.

Wear a well fitting N95 respirator. Well fitting means it seals around your nose and mouth, will leave little dents in your skin when taken off and be slightly uncomfortable to wear. We had to get our N95 masks fit tested each year in the hospital, so that we were unable to taste aerosolized saccharine. That is a tight, well sealing mask.

Alright thanks...I didn't know anything about orbital sanders so I just bought this one because it was cheap...

This particular job is done but I'll look into something better if I do this again. Sanding large areas isn't something I've had to do often...but I did have to with this one rental this time.

Okay, I'm not sure if this was your main problem but this should greatly help with any airborne dust from this or doing other projects that are dusty. Invest in a whole house portable fan, it should cost around $50. I find them very useful for number of things. Drying out wet areas, ventilating for things like fumes from paint, quickly ventilating hot or even cold air compared to the air from outside, etc., etc. by using a few other adjustments like having it right in the window surrounded by plastic and cutting out a hole about little smaller than the shroud you can create a sort of blower door to check for air leaks, infiltration saving on heat and cooling costs. I've written about this before

You want to open a large window and set it on a table about a foot and 1/2 away which almost doubles the amount of air that will go through the window because it creates a vacuum on all sides. You then want to open one or two windows on the opposite side where you need to get rid of whatever is in the air. This will create an actual wind in your unit. The more troublesome fine dust will be sucked out very quickly to the outside.

Of course it's better to do in the warmer months but even in colder months it can be done.

You need an old furnace fan mounted in a way to hold a filter on the side, let it blow out a window, change filter as needed - use with any dust source.

J, another thing to consider when buying tools- do they fit your hands? Some brands, I cannot grip properly with my puny little hands. Black and Decker are cheap, don’t last long, but always fit small hands. Bosch and Ryobi also seem to fit well. Some DeWalt lfits, Milwaukee Tools, usually not.

A guy at the one hardware store got frustrated with trying to help me find a reciprocating saw. He finally just said I should have my husband do the work. Piffle! I found a the cheaper tools seem sized for smaller hands.