For a while now I've been thinking about dust. Sawdust and shavings are the irk of making things out of wood and its more than just a inconvenience as it builds up in the corner.
Dust makes your eyes stream, makes you cough and sneeze and is a serious precursor to respiratory disease; some woods are even known to be carcenogenic - it also sticks to stuff that you've varnished in a way which makes you wonder why you bothered.
Shortly before Christmas I paid a visit to a friend of mine who is a keen and very talented carver. His workshop is always spotless and while his arty activities do not require him to make the mountains of dust that someone who wants to make furniture will it was an eyeopener to see that he none-the-less has TWO dust extraction machines.
I wasn't sure that the space and budget that I had available would enable me to manage that so he showed me his other form of defence, a Powercap Respirator from Screwfix which he bought a few years ago for (he thought £120ish). Essentially it's a hard hat baseball cap with full face visor (think fireman on a mission at the weekend) and sucks air through filters enabling you to breathe the good stuff.
This sounded like a solution however current prices are closer to £300 - Ouch!
I managed to find a similar version made by Trend on Ebay for £110 which I got and was pleased with, this just highlighted another issue.
While the mask is great during cutting and turning (it also protects the eyes and face) it doesn't help you deal with the accumulation of dust in the workspace. Of course regularly hoovering/sweeping helps but I find that after sanding and some cutting that the really fine stuff lingers around and coats everything - causing little explosions of the stuff everytime you move. So for real benefit you'd have to wear the mask at all times - nice!
Enter my wonderful (she might be reading this) wife in the form of a christmas fairy. For Christmas I received a decent little vacuum/filtering machine from Record Power (an RSDE1 for the anoraks) and the creative juices started flowing.
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| My new machine |
Rather than lug the thing around and plug it into each machine as I use it I started looking at systems that would allow me to keep it static and, through a series of tubes, link my machines as necessary. Record Power do a kit for this (as do Axminster) with options for around £100 however a few calculations later and I realised that to add the extra tubing, joins and bits to fit my space well would hike the price to around £250. It also worried me that the tubing supplied was rigid and as most of my machines are on wheels to help me make the most of the shed size that wasn't ideal (to kit the whole shebang out in flexible tubing at £7 per metre was out of the question).
Fortunately I'd heard of a thing called a drainpipe. With the use of some metres of downpipe and elbows (I used 50mm) I managed to organise a set up that reached accross the ceiling to strategic places for about £75. I added some of the more expensive flexible tube to actually link to the machines (aside from mobility they have the benefit of being suitable for hooking up out of the way when not in use) and it works well.
It did take me two trips to the builders merchants to suss out the right sized joins that I could use to get a good fit between the tubes and all the random sized machine extraction outlets but it was well worth the effort, I also got some end bits to close off the tubes that aren't in use - this redirects the power wear it's needed.
I've no doubt that someone with a bit more engineering nouse could do this much better and I probably should have used a wider diameter tube which I'm told increases suction but the total cost was around £120, its safer, works really well and most importantly means I rarely have to sweep!
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