Setting Up a Workshop

[tomsimon]

Hopeful all are well and thanks for reading this post. I am looking for a discussion to discover insights on best practices for having a workshop space inside a room of a home. It seems dust control, produced by sanding or in-home  dust marring an in-progress model, especially the rigging ropes, is a top concern for the model itself and for others who live in the home, dealing with the smells, wood sanding dust, etc, etc. One solution I noted was to turn on the dust vac, attaching the suction hose near the model, while sanding to suck up wood particles, so they would not further add to dust. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to this post helping others, also. 

[Charles Green]

I have been in your situation (in-house-model-shop dust control).  Gramophone-like cones are available that provide cross-table air movement when attached to a shop-vac.

 

I made a vertical air-movement version.  Home improvement stores sell sheets of plastic grid with 1/2 inch openings for light fixture covering.  I cut out an 18 inch square of it to serve as the top of a box with sides made of 1x4.  The bottom was made of 1/4 inch press-board.  I mounted the box on the side of my bench with hinges so it folded out of the way when not in  use.  A hole in the center of the bottom accepted the nozzle of my shop-vac.  All sanding work took place on the grid so any dust the vac did not pick up wound up in the box. 

 

Your vac must have a HEPA rated filter or your dust collection efforts will be in vain.  Fein and Festool make top quality vacs.  They have HEPA filtration and are quiet.  I have a Fein Turbo III, their largest one at the time I bought it.  While its running, you can stand right next to it and have a conversation with someone.  Fein and Festool items are expensive but are very well made.  You will get what you pay for.  

 

I will add, I had a small vac dedicated for use with the sanding box.  It was under the bench, out of the way, but impractical to get to.  I plugged the vac into a switch-box with an on/off switch for convenient control of the vac.  This vac was not quiet.  I built a sound-insulated box to cover it. 

 

On the subject of shop-vacs, due its quiet nature, the Fein vac is the most used tool in my shop.  I can use it anytime without wincing or having to take time to find the ear-muffs.  As a result, the shop stays clean - at least cleaner than it would be if the vac was painfully noisy. 

 

   

 

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Charles Green
Additional information

[No Idea]

Hi Tom

 

All of my wood working is carried out indoors as we live in a flat and have no garden.  I use a Bosch Gas20 hoover on all of my power tools which is fitted with a Hepta bag.  This works extremely well and captures I would say about 80% of the dust that I create.  The other 20% would be extremely messy and quite dangerous so I work the following way.  Bear in mind that I have a Byrne's saw, a 10" band saw, a Byrnes thicknesser, an oscillating sander plus many other power tools.

 

1.  I'm really organised and only have out the tools that I need - my room is very rarely in a mess.

2.  Making a mess is not a problem but leaving it is.  So I spend about 30 minutes after everyday wiping around with a damp cloth and generally tidying up

3.  I keep all of my tools and equipment away in cupboards so that they do not end up covered in dust.  Its far easier to wipe the doors than all of the tools

4.  I try and be thoughtful about when I'm working not just for the family but also for the neighbours.  No one likes a hoover running at 23:00

 

I clean as I go along - I have a small Dyson cordless hoover on hand all of the time just to have a quick blitz.  Most people would find my tidy, clean way of working a real pain but I have never had a complaint from my family ever.  In fact I reckon that my work room is probably the cleanest in the house.

 

Mark

[Bob Cleek]

We're talking about rooms in homes here, not dedicated workshops in outbuildings, etc. I'd have to say that the best course is to do all  major dust-producing operations and spray painting, if solvent aromas offend you, outdoors or in the garage. Simple as that. 

 

That said, I have the "Byrnes Trifecta" (saw, disk sander, and thickness sander) and any good "shop-vac" attached to their vacuum spuds will virtually eliminate any dust they produce. Beyond that, central shop dust collection systems get quite expensive rather quickly and are almost always quite noisy to operate, so not suitable for in-home use. (Living in a rural area, I have a large stand-alone workshop with sliding doors that permit my rolling any of my stationary power tools outside, or at least to the doorway in bad weather, where a large fan will blow the often-considerable amounts of dust and shavings out of the shop interior. They then usually turn into mulch before I get around to raking them up! )

 

While it's a matter of one's personal style, IMHO, there seems to be a lot of "sandpaper wood butchery" going on among the modeling fraternity. The parts are small and it may be convenient for some, but don't forget that in the days before electric sanding machines and other electric woodworking tools, dust in the workshop environment wasn't that big of a problem and much of the work of keeping the shop floor swept was assigned to an "idiot boy." (In those days, as in many "less-developed" countries today, the mentally handicapped weren't considered "disabled," but just "differently-abled.") "Wood butchers" in earlier times used hand saws, and other edged tools to shape wood. A scraper does as good, or better, a job of finishing a smooth surface than a lot of sandpaper and for a lot less money, while not filling the air with sanding dust. A chisel, carving knife, plane, spokeshave, or draw knife will shape wood by removing shavings that are easily swept up without turning your work area into a "dust bowl." Learning to use the right hand tool for the job can eliminate a huge amount of the microscopically fine (and hazardous) dust that high powered modern machines produce. Hand tools create shavings and scrapings, of course, but they are much easier to clean up that an equivalent volume of micro-particles hanging in the air over a large area.

 

How you choose to work has a lot to do with how much dust, and particularly unhealthy "micro-dust," that  you will produce.  Before worrying about how to clean it up, it's probably a lot more effective to think about how to produce less of it when working.

 

No Idea makes a very good point about shop cleanliness. (Do as he says, not as I do!  ) Keeping a work area clean and having a "place for all tools and all tools in their place" is the mark of a well-trained professional craftsman. It saves tons of time and exponentially increases your efficiency. (Which is why surgeons always have their instruments laid out in the operating room and auto mechanics spend thousands of bucks on those Snap-On rolling tool chests they use. We can get by with the much less expensive models, of course.)  As for solvents in adhesives and coatings, I would advise, not just because of the aromas which some may find offensive, but also as a matter of safety, that all volatile liquids be stored outside the living spaces of a home in a metal locker, if possible. Fire is an ever-present danger.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Bob Cleek

[No Idea]

Bob you make a really good point there that I hadn't really thought about.  I don't actually do very much sanding at all - I use planes and chisels far more than I sand.  I hadn't realised until you mentioned it.  Most of my wood waste is shavings rather than dust and its really easy to just hoover up.

 

If I need to do a big sanding job like fairing a hull then I take it outside regardless of the temperature.

 

I only swapped to edged tools a few years ago but they have become such a way of life it just seems the normal way of doing things now.  Far cleaner for in the home and a better finish too.

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

Hand sawing and hand sanding don't present a problem in my basement shop as the sawdust produced is not that great a volume and it tends to fall to the floor or work surface where it can be swept or shop-vacuumed up ... just watch out for small parts that may be near.  Power tools are another matter, so my portable bandsaw, table saw and belt sander are located in the garage - where they can be moved outside to the lawn adjacent to the driveway.  The dust blows around and settles in the grass.  A small Dremel jig saw is 'in between' in messiness if not cutting much, so I use it in the shop for low-volume work - otherwise it is carried up and outside for a lot of cutting.  The drill press stays in the basement as well, since chips produced from whatever is drilled or milled on the cross-vise just vacuum up when done.  If outdoor work (weather permitting) was not in the cards, I'd get a wood worker's dust collector and rig hoses like in a wood shop - just on a smaller scale.

 

  Shop Layout?  I do such a wide variety of things there;  modeling, hat making (for Colonial re-enacting), quilting or other sewing, antique gun smithing, fabrication for DIY home projects or building musical instruments ... that there is no single 'ideal' arrangement, other than the fixed cabinets (moved from our kitchen when I remodeled upstairs to please the Admiral) for storage of tools and supplies for the above mentioned activities.  The bench and table arrangements are just adjusted as needed.  A drop-leaf sewing table (available from JoAnn fabrics) can roll around the open space, yet collapse if I want it out of the way.

[Roger Pellett]

I just, after 30 years in my present shop, decided to get serious about dust control.  When using a shop vacuum to control large volumes of dust produced by major power tools, the filter quickly gets plugged up.  As a result, you are constantly buying surprisingly expensive filters or your dust collection system shuts down until you get around to buying a new filter.

 

A simple improvement is the installation of a cyclone upstream of the vacuum source, the same technology as that used in expensive bagless household vacuum cleaners.  The cyclone that I used (I do not represent the company) is an Oneida Dust Deputy.  This sits on top of a can with a hole in the lid.  A five gallon plastic paint bucket will work.  The hose from the vacuum hooks up to the outlet of the cyclone.  Another hose goes from the inlet of the vacuum to the tool creating the dust.  In use, the heavier dust particles, wood chips, etc, drop into the can.  The fine dust carries over into the vacuum filter.  

 

You can buy the cyclone separately or you can buy a kit.  I found the various sizes of hoses used by the different shop vacuum suppliers to be confusing.  The cyclone itself has 2in actual OD connections.  Oneida recommends using rubber plumbing connectors sold in the plumbing section of hardware stores.  2in actual OD will match the ID of a 1-1/2in nominal pipe size (NPS) rubber plumbing connector.  These rubber connectors also come in reducing sizes such as 1-1/2 x 2in NPS.  You should also be able to find male and female adaptors to connect to your vacuum hoses as needed.

 

I was concerned about vacuum leaks that would keep things from working but mine worked as planned the first time that I started it up.

 

Roger

 

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by Roger Pellett