Cross grain sanding : Should you or shouldn’t you?

I’ve not looked through the Internet lately about this but when I ran the floor sanding world website many moons ago, the web said NO NO NO!! to cross grain sand a wood floor was the biggest mistake you could ever make and would ruin your beautiful hardwood or softwood floor. Lol, I put my feelings across about this at the time, what a load of poppy cock.

All professional floor sanders sand across the grain, there’s actually one guy I know who cross sands at all different angles right up to an 80 grit and only goes with grain on the final pass. That doesn’t work for me and yes I have tried the method under the instruction of the guy that does this, I feel by cross grain sanding at a 36 grit, 50 grit and 80 grit just takes off far too much timber which ends up in plastic bags in a skip and the floors lifespan is shortened dramatically.

I do not cross grain sand for the sake of it, I like to preserve the life, every floor is different, I do not have a set process, I use my experience to judge the best process for the particular floor I’m sanding.