Dust removal

And their spring cousins the snow snakes....

Very cheap - well, there's wearing an approved respirator at all times. Not wearing one is cheap on the inital outlay, and expensive later on, as your health degrades.

For the air beyond your respirator, you can try a furnace filter and a box fan, but the box fan will be greatly reduced in effectiveness by the furnace filter. If you can find an old hot air furnace at the dump with a working blower (big squirrel cage fan) that will do a better job at your price point - set it up with a regular furnace filter or two, and finish with a washable electrostatic filter. (ie, 2-3 filters in series). Replace the cheap ones and wash the electrostatic one regularly.

If you're willing to spend a bit more money for better air quality, an Oneida dust collector not only sucks up most of the dust as it's made, it also will filter it out as well as, or better than, the recirculating dust filters. But they re not cheap, and the cheap ones do not tend to filter as well. You might be able to save a few bucks by getting their filters, and cobbling the fan up from junk.

Keith, The size of your dust collection system will depend on how much woodwork you do. I started out with a fan and a filter, then went to a

1 horse collector that I moved to which ever machine I was using at the time. This eventually got to be too much of a hastle, moving it all the time and tripping over the hoses and wires. I moved from a 400 foot shop to a 860 foot shop. It was time to get a centralized system. I went with an Oneida system. I asked them if I had to refilter the air before it went back into the shop. They sounded a bit put out, and replied firmly that their systems did not leak any dust at all. After almost 2 years, I agree with them. The pleated paper filters are wonderful. A remote on/off switch is also a necessity. Then again, it depends on how much work you do. robo hippy

Keith, The size of your dust collection system will depend on how much woodwork you do. I started out with a fan and a filter, then went to a

1 horse collector that I moved to which ever machine I was using at the time. This eventually got to be too much of a hastle, moving it all the time and tripping over the hoses and wires. I moved from a 400 foot shop to a 860 foot shop. It was time to get a centralized system. I went with an Oneida system. I asked them if I had to refilter the air before it went back into the shop. They sounded a bit put out, and replied firmly that their systems did not leak any dust at all. After almost 2 years, I agree with them. The pleated paper filters are wonderful. A remote on/off switch is also a necessity. Then again, it depends on how much work you do. robo hippy

Hi All

I,ve just expanded my shed and I,m nearly ready to consider a very cheap dust removal system. Any suggestions. I have a shop vac if that's any help. Someone suggested inclosing in a box and using it as a dust clearing system.

Suggestions Please

Keith Newfoundland Canada A1N 4W8

Maybe. I will look. Insulating almost finished. 20F here!

Lol

ICE SNAKES. Go Away

I wrote about snow snakes in this post to the survival underground shelter list years ago;

Welp young feller, when I was growing up on the farm my Uncle Floyd taught me a wise ole saying, "A farting horse will never tire, a farting man is good to hire." They don't write slogans like that anymore, leastwise not the ones you hear on TV. All those farts are a sign people been eating and not starving. I'd rather suffer a few farts that'd puke a buzzard from a well fed man than have to pull the weight of some poor loser who hasn't eaten in so long he has cob webs around his ass hole. Wait til some winter morning you wake up in the cabin so cold you see your breath cloud fall to the floor and get frost on your nose hairs cause the wood stove has been out for hours. You and the misses is snuggled up all warm and personal under the quilt and she passes one of the silent but deadly, could'a been the stand in for the Angel of Death scene in the movie Moses. It was last nights supper of corn bread and beans with the left over beans for lunch the next day. This was followed by a supper of bean burritos with Habenaro sauce and home made goat cheese. I'd spent the day chopping wood and was too sore to move till I was plumb paralyzed by the vapors. I'd have been a little happier if I could have gotten my head out from under the covers long enough to to suck in a lung fulla frigid cold and die quickly rather than slowly of nose poisoning. Now if'n ya want really rank, go to a convention of vegetarians sometime. Them folks not only live on beans, they like to congregate indoors. Least you would think people could warn you about things like this first. I didn't learn it till I had to drive a bus full of them 200 miles each way, in the winter with the windows up. Must be like people who invite you to water ski for the first time don't warn you that if you fall on your butt at 40 miles per hour that certain muscles are not powerful enough to be watertight. Maybe next time I'll tell the story of how that winter I paid back Mr Skiboat, and the snowsnakes of Flat Rock Creek. Cousin Homer

Cool Site Art! I like your business philospohy. This is my idea of retirement - do what you love for the right reasons. It is obvious that you are having fun!

Last night's presentation at our Woodturning Guild was on dust collection. Several points about best practises came out of it.

1. Shop vacs are not dust collectors they are vacum cleaners. They don't move the volume of air that you need. They use a high speed turbine to move the air and the air is used to cool the turbine. Dust gums up the bearings and causes it to overheat. The motors are not designed to run for hours at a time. You can also laugh at the so called horsepower ratings. A 110V 15Amp circuit puts out about 2HP of electrical energy, it is absolutely impossible to get more mechanical energy out than the elctrical going in, in fact it has to be less.

1. The dust that causes the most health issues is not the big chunks or shavings, its the fine particulates. To get that out you have to have good, well maintained filters that catch sub 5 micron particles. Many retail dust collection systems come with 20 micron filters bags so you either have to get new ones or make sure they are correct to begin with. The presenter had examples of 5 micron washable bags as well a 1 micron replacables. 1 micron is better but more expensive since you have higher replacement costs.

2. The system has to move enough air for the largest machine you plan to use. If you are going to use more than one at a time then you have to add the requirements together.

1. The more piping you have the more loss there is and the bigger the impeller has to be.

2. Use pipes that are the same diameter as the unadorned outlet of the impeller. If it has one of those "octopus" attachments take it off and use pipe that is the same diameter as the hole. Branches can be the same diameter as the hole on the machine's dust collection hood but should never be less than 4 inches. The typical header size for home shops is 6 inches.

1. The only place to have a "T" junction is just before the intake to the impeller of a one stage unit. It should be oriented so that the leg is facing down. It will catch large chunks before they go through the impeller. Empty it out every day so that it doesn't fill up. All other juctions are "Wyes".

2. Stove pipe and heating and ventillation pipe are desined to move air that is under pressure and are made from light guage metal. A dust collection system creates a partial vacuum which can collapse that type of pipe. The presenter recommended around 28 guage pipe.

1. A one stage unit sucks air and particles through the impeller and into a filter / catch bag setup. A two stage unit sucks air through a cylone separator before it hits the impeller. The cylone, when properly designed, separates out 80~95% of the particles so that only fine stuff goes through the impeller and into the filters. Cyclones seemed like a very good idea to me. A garbage can with a plastic lid will take out some big stuff but it is not a cyclone.

2. If you locate the impeller outside the shop then you have to provide air to replace the air you're sucking out. This either comes from outside or via a return from wherever the impeller is. If you heat or air condition then the air return is the way to go.

1. Any runs of plastic hose should have a bare metal wire run through it and connected to the metal pipe. Everything should be bonded electrically and grounded. You can use an ohm meter to check this.

2. All piping should have smooth interiors. 90 degree elbows should have a large, smooth radius, HVAC elbows are generally too sharp a turn and very rough on the inside.

1. All of the above gets rid of the big stuff and some of the small stuff, you need one or more air cleaners to continuously clean the air of small stuff. Turn it on when you come into the shop and leave it running for two hours after you leave. It should be sized to do at least five complete air exchanges per hour. That means take the volume of your shop, multiply it by five, divide by 60. This gives the minimum CFM for the cleaner. Make sure the CFM rating is with the filters in place. Some manufacturers inflate their numbers by giving the fan's CFM rating in free air. I/E. no filters in place. This type of thing provides valuable insight into the manufacturer's attitudes towards other areas of construction.

2. The air cleaner is made of a washable pre-filter and a disposable pleated main filter. You can knock the dust off the main filter but your not getting the stuff trapped in the weave and your poking bigger holes in it. They need to be changed when they are clogged.

1. When you go to clean out the bags on the main system:

a. Knock the filters to loosen any dust that is caked on; b. Go wait about 20 minutes for the dust to settle; c. Pull the plastic bag up, twist tye it and then disconnect it from the system; d. Remove excess air from around the new plastic bag by sucking it out with a vacuumn cleaner.

The whole idea is that its silly to have a wonderful filter collect all this dangerous stuff and then get a faceful whenever you need to clean out the bag.

Finally the presenter had an interesting motto. "Woodworking is a hobby, breathing isn't".

Take care - Frank

I'm considering something I haven't seen or heard of anyone else using. A short length of flexible plastic dust collector hose to a metal duct with an in-duct blower fan exhausting the sanding cloud directly outdoors. (These duct blowers are used as auxiliary pusher units for HVAC installations where the duct run is very long.)

I'm not worried about the turning shavings and chips just the dust from sanding. I've got a more than adequate dust collector but it's rather loud for long periods - with the lathe I end up using it as an expensive chip vacuum instead of a dust pan. I've considered a hanging filtration unit, but I'd still have to wear a mask or use the dust collector for the times during major dust production. The 6" duct blower pulls about

200cfm which I believe would be adequate with the light weight sanding particles - I might consider an 8" but am not sure how squeezing the outlet side down to 6" to exit through the building joists would affect the cfm rating. The blower runs about $40, piping and clamps might push it to $60 or just a hair above.

The downside to this is that, while the unit's running, the inside air - whether it's heated or cooled - is being dumped outside and outside air is being sucked into the building through the various cracks and seepages. The upside is that it's certainly the least expensive option, can be easily switched on just when sanding, it gathers the dust at the source so a mask wouldn't be required, and it's likely very quiet.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

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Owen, I use a similar set up with a 20 inch box fan and a pleated paper filter directly behind the head stock end of the lathe. It's about 10 inches back, just enough to clear a max diameter blank. This is about 400 sq inches absorbing the turning dust output and a little of the shavings. However, this is not enough to take ALL the dust out of the air on the first pass. It will take a full room of dust to almost nil in a short time, but I still have some "nose dust" if not using a dust mask. Not enough to be too bothersome on most woods, but enough to be a problem with mesquite or other allergic woods. Better safe than sneezing.

Ken Moon Webberville, TX

One advantage to a dust collector is that with the new pleated paper filters that collect particles down to 1 micron is that you can vent the air back into the shop. I built a separate room for the dust collector which muffles the sound a bit, plus my lathe is in another room. A sanding hood helps a lot. Take a look at the one that One Way has. Plastic sheet stock is available in 1/4 in thick or less sheets at about $30 pet sheet. It bends easily. If the bowl is 75% covered and the turner stands in front, you can be pulling all of the cfm through 2 to 3 sq. ft of area. No more presto logs from the nose. I usually will wear hearing protection of some sort on long sanding days, and sometimes when turning. robo hippy

I can sure appreciate putting the DC in a separate room, but having the lathe in another room must make turning pretty challenging. Unless... your arms are really... really... long...

A mini-gloat follows: The VP of one of our local chapters runs a plastics machining biz - high-tolerance stuff for the tech industry and the like. We, the chapter members, are highly encouraged to dumpster dive out back for whatever scrap we want - acrylic, polycarb, pvc, etc. (Saves the company the dumping costs.) Some of this stuff is 2 or 3 square feet of brand new, still got the protective wrap on it, 1/4" -

3/8" - 1/2" plastic.

I just came across a couple dust hoods on amazon for about $20; the light bulb that appeared over my head indicated to all looking on that I realized I could make my own from some of the scrap plastic I've collected over the last year.