Early Spring Cleaning

[capncarl]

When I was pulling boards off my wood rack for my last batch of Tiny Tables of the year I was overwhelmed by the amount of dust I stirred up. A quick look around the shop showed an alarming layer of wood dust on everything. It has been over a year since my last shop deep clean. I finished one Tiny Table out of the 6 that I had planned and put the rest of the wood back on the rack. The articles by Bill Pentz will make you think seriously about exposing yourself to wood dust, especially as much as I must be creating. The way I see it there are 3 choices, ignore the problem and hope for the best, get rid of the woodworking equipment or spend the money and fix the dust problem. Over the holidays I've done a lot of research on dust collector cyclones and ducting and think my next move will be to purchase a 5 hp cyclone and 6" duct to replace the 4" duct piping and Delta/Thein/Wynn nano system. Then each piece of equipment will have to be fitted with dust collection.
What dust collection are other Sawdustzone members using? What dust collection are you using at equipment? Is there a better way.
Thoughts on cyclone collectors?
capncarl

[mpc]

I have a small-shop sized Delta dust collector (1 HP if I remember correctly) and use the "drag the hose to the tool in use" method since most of my power tools are on mobile bases - my shop doesn't lend itself to permanent ducts. For the tools I use the most (BT3, band saw) this captures 80-90% of the sawdust produced. I use a shop vac with a Hepa filter to capture dust from the random orbit sander. And I have a Rikon overhead air filter unit. The Rikon's input filter gets caked after a day or two in the shop; it's amazing how much airborne dust this catches and yet I still find a dust layer accumulating on top of everything too. So where is all that airborne dust coming from? My Delta dust collector has a 1 micron upper bag, and plastic lower bag. I'm beginning to wonder if most of the dust accumulation is blow-through from the 1 micron bag. The drill press next to the Delta does seem to get dustier than other parts of the shop... Next time I have a large shop day when the weather is warm enough, maybe I'll put the Delta outside the shop and see if that makes a difference. Thinking about it, the fine dust accumulation IS on tools that I haven't been using; the table saw may have small sawdust chips on it but rarely does it have a layer of fine dust.

When I know I'm going to be doing a lot of fine-dust making (sanding especially), I use a downdraft table connected to the Delta to supplement the shop-vac and I wear the Trend Airshield unit. It's a tad noisy though - the fan that draws air through the filters is fairly high-pitched and whiny.

In addition to the 3 choices you listed, there is a 4th: more hand tools replacing power tools. Card scrapers instead of sanding for example. Hand planes to make rabbets and dados, molding planes instead of routers, etc.

mpc

[capncarl]

Bill Pentz's Dust Collector Research web site does a great job explaining why we small woodshopers have such a hard time with wood dust. The bottom line is we don't install adequate equipment. Our woodworking is a hobby that we try to accomplish on a shoestring budget and it is hard to justifying spending a couple thousand bucks on a tool that doesn't seem to improve our woodworking. The lesser expensive equipment that we compromise on for our shops will handle the chips but not the health harming dust.
capncarl

[capncarl]

mpc, I do use a fair amount of hand tools, but I use power too a lot while making Tiny Tables. I suppose that I was in denial that my DELTA 50-760 1.5HP 1,200 CFM Vertical Bag Dust Collector was adequate for my shop. Before I replaced the 1 micron bag filter on the Delta 50-760 with a Wynn .5 micron nano filter there was always a lot of dust on the walls and equipment near the collector, but the installation of the nano filter stopped that dust. The dust collection at the saws is poor, it doesn't even catch all of the chips, and looses a bunch of fine and invisible dust.. The Delta 50-760 does an ok job on the drum sander and the planner, but there is always powder dust on the equipment, no telling how much invisible dust gets in the air.
capncarl

[atgcpaul]

I use the HF DC with Wynn filter and Super Dust Deputy for my jointer, planer, and sometimes table saw. I'm not good about using DC at the TS, but I am if I'm doing a lot of ripping or dadoing. For my drum sander, I use my shopvac and mini Dust Deputy. The shopvac hose is just closer to the sander and that setup works pretty well.

For all sanding tasks I connect the dust deputy hose to the sander and I've begun wearing a good face mask--looks like I work in some infectious disease ward.

I also connect the shopvac and DD hose if I'm using the Domino or tracksaw.

I have yet to plumb up something for my CMS and it shows.

I have an overhead air cleaner but it seems pointless to use it if I'm in there unless I'm going to wear a mask full time which I have considered doing. The mask is kind of nice in the winter because it's recycling your warm breath back in to you a little--just eat a mint if there's an halitosis.

[Brian G]

I think Bill Pentz has done a great job of freaking people out and blowing budgets. His circumstances are different than most people. Your living room ambient air has a higher particle count than what he's trying to achieve in a woodworking shop, and an ISO9 cleanroom has a greater tolerance for particle counts.

Catch as much fine dust and chips as you can at the source. Use an air cleaner. Wear a NIOSH dust mask or respirator. Enjoy woodworking.

If, after doing all of that within a reasonable budget causes you to rethink your enjoyment of woodworking, quit woodworking and sell your tools. You'll still be breathing fine particles of a different type, but it won't be caused by woodworking.

Lex parsimoniae

[capncarl]

I've been moving clutter, vacuuming it off then vacuuming the shelves in my shop for several days now, I'm almost through. Then I'll move workbenches, vacuum everything in and on them, vacuum the walls and floor and put them back. Several more days of that. I've emptied my 15 gallon shopvac and cleaned the hepa filter a dozen times already. Dang I had some kind of dust.
Biian G I spend too much time in my shop to mess with a mask. Being retired I often spend 7-8 hrs a day in my shop. Not always woodworking, sometimes piddling with boat stuff, working on car/truck/lawnmower, guns, reloading ammo or just piddling. Lots of time my wife comes hangs out, brings lunch or works on her craft stuff. Neighbors drop by, we sit around and socialize and try to empty my refrigerator. We all enjoy my shop and I try to keep it a lot cleaner than it is now. I agree that Bill Pentz may have freaked a bunch of people out but his writings made me think. Maybe wood dust is the reason I can't work hard for 10 minutes without my 65 year old lungs screaming SLOW DOWN fool.
capncarl

[cwsmith]

My shop space is located in my basement and though I use a significant number of power tools (BT3, RAS, drill press, router table, and multiple hand-held sanders as well a Ryobi bench-top bandsaw and belt/disc sander, I don't do nearly as much work anymore as you fellows. (My wife has taken on a sensitivity to even the smell of fresh lumber... and that is the point of getting my shop out to the shed.)

However, when I was going full-bore, all I used was my Ridgid Shop Vac... hooking it to each machine as needed. While that sounds a bit cumbersome, my shop space is pretty limited to using only one machine at a time and the only two machines with fixed positions are the RAS and the self-standing Drill Press. All the others get wheeled in and out of a central position as they are needed. So hooking up the shop vac is not a big deal.

The worse dust offender is the BT, even though I've closed off the bottom, so much escapes around the blade guard and the Vac simply can't begin to catch it. The ROS is the next biggest culprit and I use a hose-reduction from the Vac to do a fair job there.

After several day's work, I do get a fairly small amount of fine dust settling on the shelves and bench top. I guess the main control for me, beyond what the Shop Vac catches directly, is that I clean up often, running the hose attachment over the shelves and across the floor as well as around the tools that I just used. I empty the Vac every day, bagging the 'dump' in a trash can which I keep a lid on.. Vacuuming up the dust on a daily basis pretty much prevents it from sticking to a surface which otherwise would happen if I delayed the task.

On hard-to-get-at places, like on cluttered shelves, I also use my little Stinger vac as a blower, in conjunction with the larger diameter hose of the shop Vac. That way, the stuff that is blown loose is immediately sucked out of the air. Thing of it is, I don't like 'dust', it's a good place for mold to grow in our too-humid summers and the spiders love it. (I don't like spiders either.) Overall the shop is pretty clean, though according to my wife, "too cluttered" (Hey, creative minds are messy )

When the new shop comes together, I'll have a HF dust collector in place with proper ducting to all the machinery. (That's already purchase and still unassembled in the box.) I hope to put a better filter "canister" filter on it. Somewhere out there I'm also planning for some kind of air filter like either the Grizzly or the Rikon box.

CWS

[capncarl]

When we start off with a workshop it is hopefully just an empty room with a few tools scattered about, as years tick by equipment is added, shelves line the walls, workbenches are built and piled full of stuff, under the workbenches are filled to the brim with clutter..... at this point our shops become the classical 5 pounds of clutter in a 2 pound sack. Now just vacuuming the floors is about all a shop cleaning means, and the dust keeps building up on the clutter that doesn't get the daily clean. I keep 2 Honeywell hepa air filters that are rated for about 600sf running 24/7. They clean the shop air pretty well overnight but when I start moving stuff around in the shop, operating equipment, even running the shop vac, disturbs dust that has settled on clutter. At this point a deep cleaning is only prolonging the problem, which is capturing the dust before it re-coats the clutter again.