I am in the middle of my first attempt at drywalling, and it is not going well. Mainly I didn't know what I was doing and the framing is not good. That makes drywalling especially hard.

I have one particularly bad joint, where one side is pitched up at an angle. I wonder if I could take a random orbital sander to that and knock it down even. I can attach a vacuum to the sander, so it should be too awful. I also have a powered dust mask and a pretty decent air filter...
Any compelling reason not to use a ROS.

I know you are supposed to just use sandpaper on a block, but since my ROS has a vacuum attachment, can I use that to sand the mud just in general? I expect the fine dust probably isn't great for the sander, but I have several that getting pretty near retirement age, so if they get ruined it isn't a tragedy.

Thanks.

 

I'm not sure what you hope to achieve with the sander
Sanding j/c is messy and you can only sand what mud is there. It won't help any if you sand into the paper! Usually it's easier to add more mud to get it all leveled out.

While a sanding sponge works great sanding the edges of a repair. A sanding pole holds the paper flat which is what you want for the majority of the sanding. That way the mud is sanded flat/level and there is no waves in the mud from using a sponge or loose sandpaper.

Would your problem area show up if you posted a pic?

 

Pictures will help but it sounds to me like you need more mud and then to float it out over a greater area.