It’s been about 15 years since I did my first at-home paint job. And I’m still hearing all about it. Probably because I primed and painted the car in the attached garage that backed up to our family room. Every once in a while, my wife catches a whiff of something I’m painting outside and reminds me how I filled the house with the fumes of catalysts, reducers, and various other chemicals that come with doing paintwork.

That memory sticks with her to this day, but at the time I was working on the project, I remember her being more upset by all the dust I was tracking into the house through the mud room between the garage and the bathroom where I cleaned up. Between body filler, primer/surfacer, and eventually single-stage urethane in BMW Hellrot (light red), I spent hours and hours over the course of several weeks performing block sanding to get a satisfactory finish. And every sanding session meant cleaning up the sanding dust I’d created in the process.

At the time, I would have killed for a better way to sand the body without dealing with all the dust. My father, who has been a lifelong woodworker, set his workshop with vacuum nozzles on virtually all his big dust-generating machines – his table saw, router, planer, belt sander and others. Imagine if I’d had a vacuum hose attached to sanding boards.

My wishes have been answered, albeit too late for the BMW project. But definitely not too late for the Range Rover I’m currently restoring. Eastwood recently developed exactly the tool I needed in the form of the Eastwood Elite Contour DSB Dustless Sanding Blocks. The rigid blocks, available in three different lengths, feature perforated sanding surfaces that work with specially made perforated sandpapers to allow sanding dust to flow out to a vacuum cleaner connection at the back of the blocks. The hose connects to any standard shop vacuum to catch up to 95% of the dust created, leaving virtually nothing to sweep up afterward.

According to Eastwood’s R&D manager Mark Robidoux, the Contour DSB was developed specifically with the DIY body worker in mind. Often working in home garages without sophisticated ventilation filtration in place, hobbyists (me included) can take advantage of dustless sanding blocks to spend more time sanding and less time cleaning up the shop. As a side benefit, the continuous vacuum keeps the sanding face from becoming loaded as quickly, meaning less time cleaning or changing out paper.

The DSB base kit includes an 11”-long block, more than 12 feet of clear flexible vacuum hose and a hose adaptor to connect to either 1.23” or 1.75” vacuum cleaner hoses. A 5” block and 16” block are also available separately, but all three blocks are included in the DSB Master Kit. The DSB sandpapers are sold separately in 40.5-foot rolls of 40-, 80-, 120-, 180-, 220-, 320-, and 400-grit papers with a PSA backing. And if you get pulled into doing house projects, the boards and papers are also great for doing drywall work.

When I eventually get to priming, filling, and painting our Range Rover project, I intend put Eastwood’s dustless sanding blocks through their paces. They should be a big time saver, even if I no longer have to worry about tracking dust into the house. Check out the side-by-side demo video below to see what I mean.