A few years back I spent an afternoon ripping dimension lumber. My shop got so dusty the air was like fog. At some point just “toughing it out” is dumb and bad for your health.
I decided it was time to do something. (Unlike politicians, when I say I’ll “do something” I actually do it and 99% of the time the something has a demonstrably positive useful outcome. This is why I feel empowered to mock politicians who equate speech with accomplishment. I invite everyone to join me in belittling the careers of people (of any political stripe) who “do something” until they “do” their favored topic right into the damn ground with “unintended” consequences. But I digress… )
I’m a cheap cuss so I scoured Craigslist. I scored a dust collector that looks almost exactly like this:
Here’s a link to it on Amazon. (Note: I don’t have that model, I have a old knockoff. But it sure looks functionally the same.) I got it for roughly half the cost of buying new and I can’t see how a new one would be better. Based on visual inspection the only difference between my model (dated 1995) and the one on Amazon is that mine is a different color and lacks wheels. (I could slap on $15 worth of wheels but so far it hasn’t been necessary. You don’t move a sawdust collector so much as route its function with hose.)
Like all Craigslist purchases, acquiring it was interesting. After some phone tag, I met some dude in a parking lot in a town 250 miles from my house. (I was traveling.) I know what you’re thinking when I say “some dude” but this guy was wearing a suit and tie. It was in the middle of a city’s rush hour commute and we met in a bank parking lot that wasn’t his office and wasn’t yet open; it was just a mutually convenient highway exit. We unloaded a dusty old collector from his Lexus and tossed it in my Dodge. (Who carries a sawdust collector in a Lexus?) I paid cash. I stuck up a conversation with tie-boy thinking “who’d you get this collector from” but he was pretty knowledgeable about such s seen things. Either that or it’s just paint. Regardless, it works for me and it serves as a reminder to be careful in the shop. (Also it’s just a few drops, not something from a horror movie.)
In case you’re wondering, Tie-boy had all ten. I think. I wasn’t specifically looking.
Back to mundane logistics, the collector is just part of the puzzle. You need to route suction to your dust source(s) which is, almost always a machine(s). Note: one of the cool things about chisels and old school tools is that you make a lot less dust. (I try to use hand tools as much as possible. Once you get used to them, hand tools are amazingly useful.)
The obvious solution for routing suction is hose. In my case 4″ hose. It should look like this:
Here’s the amazon link. And no, I don’t have any cool hose like that .
The nearest place I could find hose like that is 80 miles away. It was opaque (I think clear would be better) and it was expensive. I bought one 10′ section and it just killed me to pay that much. Even on Amazon you’re talking the ballpark of 2′ a foot.
Setting up a dust collector can nickel and dime you to death!
But wait, there’s more. You can’t just route to each of your machines. In my case I have 4 machines that are dust makers; a table saw, a thickness planer, a radial arm saw, and a bandsaw. If I route to all four and turn on the suction, it won’t work. I have inadequate power to clear the machine in question and also waste 3/4 of the suction on the other (currently unused) machines.
Enter the device with the best name ever; blast gates. A blast gate is just a “valve” for your suction hose. A blast gate on a 4″ sawdust hose is pretty much the same thing as a gate valve on a 1/2″ PVC pipe. Except, you don’t have to get quite so uptight. A little dust leaking out of a fitting here or there is no big deal. In fact, I built all my system to just be friction fit together. No cementing pipes or permanently affixing Ts and bends… just stuff ’em together like Tinkertoys. That way you can pull it apart if something clogs (and I assume that will happen sooner or later) or to reconfigure when I decide I’ve been a good boy and deserve to get another stationary power tool.
Some blast gates are plastic and look comically chintzy. Here’s what appears to be a medium quality aluminum model:
Here’s the Amazon link. (No, I don’t have any commercially made blast gates. See the pattern?)
Even if I was willing to spend the scratch, it pissed me off that I can’t buy one within 100 miles of my house. I mean, everyone in the goddamn world has a table saw and all I wanted to do was “level up” to something that wouldn’t fill my lungs with dust. In a world where I can buy 60 kinds of yogurt how hard should it be to locally stock a few dust collection components?
Lucky for me I’m an Adaptive Curmudgeon. It’s sawdust, not uranium. And there are a million you-tube videos of how to fabricate all this crap; made by people who are better woodworkers than me (and probably own a Lexus).
So, aside from the 14 year old vac and one length of hose, I built everything else from plywood, adhesive, sewer pipe, and junk I found at the local hardware store. It wasn’t free but I estimate it was well under half the cost of buying new and it seems to work just fine.
This is the internet so pics or it didn’t happen. Stay tuned.
Don’t forget to ground the hell out of that, things get interesting with dry climates, high speed particles running over plastics, said dry speed particles being a componenet for a wonderful FAE, and the inevitable static spark. Nice score, by the way.
I’m glad you mentioned that! It’s on my “to do” list and I’m not sure what I ought to do. I haven’t yet grounded it and I’m not sure how to go about it. Any grounding ideas will be gleefully accepted and inexpertly applied. (Note: my single 10′ length of real dust hose has a coiled wire in it that is both structural and I presume a grounding mechanism. Oddly, sewer pipe is not equipped with grounded wire.
Dude, put down your whiskey glass and re-do da maffs. 1995 to now-ish is greater than 14. On the other hand, nice score. By the way, have you tried Eagle Rare?
“Do not look behind the curtain!” All of my prose comes out perfectly every time…
What? You saw behind the curtain? Shit! OK, fine. I posted it after all. What you’re seeing is a scrambled version and not quite what I intended (or somewhat unnervingly, what I remember writing). I cop to blogging under the simultaneous influence of bronchitis, bourbon, and the worst case of cabin fever I’ve had in years.
I will rectify shortly.
Funny you should mention Eagle Rare. I usually prefer 1792 which is very hard to acquire locally. I test drove a bottle of something last year and loved it but forgot the brand name after I threw out the empty bottle. (That was very frustrating!) Eagle Rare seems to ring a bell; maybe I’ll buy a bottle. Lately I’ve been adding Buffalo Trace to my bourbon shelf too.
Keeping the dust out of the air was the goal!
“Do not look behind the curtain!” All of my prose comes out perfectly every time…
What? You saw behind the curtain? Shit! OK, fine. I posted it after all. What you’re seeing is a scrambled version and not quite what I intended (or somewhat unnervingly, what I remember writing). I cop to blogging under the simultaneous influence of bronchitis, bourbon, and the worst case of cabin fever I’ve had in years.
I will rectify shortly.
I think some accidental editing removed a portion of paragraph five? Right now it reads:
“I stuck up a conversation with tie-boy thinking “who’d you get this collector from” but he was pretty knowledgeable about such s seen things. Either that or it’s just paint.”
“Do not look behind the curtain!” All of my prose comes out perfectly every time…
What? You saw behind the curtain? Shit! OK, fine. I posted it after all. What you’re seeing is a scrambled version and not quite what I intended (or somewhat unnervingly, what I remember writing). I cop to blogging under the simultaneous influence of bronchitis, bourbon, and the worst case of cabin fever I’ve had in years.
I will rectify shortly.
One should be careful about posting when one has been using medication. I’ll spare you the point-by-point and simply note that, if your vac is from 1995, it is actually TWENTY-FOUR years old, not fourteen…
“Do not look behind the curtain!” All of my prose comes out perfectly every time…
What? You saw behind the curtain? Shit! OK, fine. I posted it after all. What you’re seeing is a scrambled version and not quite what I intended (or somewhat unnervingly, what I remember writing). I cop to blogging under the simultaneous influence of bronchitis, bourbon, and the worst case of cabin fever I’ve had in years.
I will rectify shortly.
Nice score. I want DC for my shop but funding right now only allows for masks and a big ass fan at one end blowing towards the big door. I have the really dusty stuff near the door. I do have my planer hooked up dedicated to a shop vac/cyclone which really helps. Between that and a leaf blower when done with a project, I can keep it semi manageable.
I grew up across the road from the Buffalo Trace Distillery. We waited for the school bus enveloped in the smell of mash cooking. I now live 10 minutes from Wild Turkey and Four Roses. Whiskey is in my blood (see what I did there?). Eagle is the good stuff from Buffalo. Like Knob Creek is the good Jim Beam stuff. Come visit, we have bourbon, awesome food, good music, horses, and a firearm or two.
Ah Kentucky. One of my favorite places to visit. An unplanned motorcycle cruise on the Daniel Boone highway was shockingly beautiful and peaceful. Once I spent 3 weeks in Tennessee and my favorite memory from that trip was a weekend in Kentucky. Tell that to your friends in Tennessee. 🙂
Sorry, I’m an idgit and just realized you reposed with corrections. *Facepalm* Please ignore my previous comment
No worries.