Thread: We Have Skills Too !!

It seems that most shop equipment such as saws, sanders etc have an exhaust port that shop vacs can easily plug into and there are various adapters so as to capture some of the dust.

Well I don't have a conventional shop vac. Mine came from work, it's made in Italy and a nice unit. Somehow one of the cast aluminum legs was broken and the the manager was going to throw it away and I just brought it home, made a new base out of plywood and used some cheapo Harbor Freight wheels to restore the mobility. However the nozzle is permanently secured to the hose so it doesn't work to plug into exhaust ports for sucking up dust and small chips.

Here it is:



I decided to make my shop vac work/at least on the new band saw.

I used a 90 deg rubber connector for ABS pipe. It came with worm drive hose clamps on both ends to keep things in place but technically the piece was quite a bit too small to fit over the OD of the machine's exhaust port but with the help some really hot water and a bit of brute force and ignorance the rubber flexed over the outlet. No need to use the worm drive hose clamp it doesn't want to come loose.



Then on the other end I used a PVC coupler for 1 1/4" PVC pipe. Again the hot water treatment but not much brute force and it stretched over the coupler. After cooling down the PVC coupler could be twisted with a lot of effort but I needed it to stay put due to how the unit is going to be used so it got the hose clamp.



OK, now a section of 1 1/4" PVC was cut and the ends smoothed. This is a press fit into the coupler:



The shop vac nozzle is tapered. It's a press fit inside of the PVC tubing.



The cost for the build was around $15 (the 45 deg rubber piece was $11 with tax) and I have a bit of the 1 1/4" PVC tubing left. It should at least help capture some of the dust from the saw.

Now to see how to do something similar for my Ryobi bench top belt sander. However the discharge port is a larger size so back to the creative drawing board.

looks good Roy! I didn't know they made rubber fittings like that. That is some knowledge that could come in handy some day!

I've got an idea for the sander. Maybe you can get a funnel big enough to fit over the coupling and attach to the side of the sander. Then cut the skinny end for the hose.

You can likely find a tapered rubber coupling at the plumbing store that will take you from 2 1/4 ID to 1 1/4 ID, if you are lucky you will find it in a long sweep 90. My dust system is also somewhat hobbled together, but it’s very effective.

Well I had a bit of time to play with the new dust collection system today. I'd done a bit of cutting some wood blanks before I created the dust control system so I had a good idea of how much dust there would be not only inside the saw but also on the exterior of the saw and surrounding area.

Eureka! My system works and seems to work fairly well

I was concerned that the reduced connections would not allow enough volume to be able to extract the dust. However that didn't seem to happen. The inside of the saw was almost dust free. I noticed that there wasn't much dust on the wheels and very little elsewhere.

There was a bit of dust on the table and the work area but not anything like without the dust collection system. But after disconnecting the shop vac hose it was a quick clean up.

Every once in awhile I get something right

Dust control is very important and unrated. The big particles are no big deal as they do not remain airborne. The smaller ones that suspend in the air are the dangerous ones, those are the ones we can breath in. They stay if our lungs for a long time and can cause asthma and allergies. If you have a great extraction system but poor filtration what you actually have is a pump for hazardous material. The bandsaw won’t create small enough particles to become airborne, however your sander is another story. It’s a long winded reply to simply say get a good filter for your vacuum.
:-)

Originally Posted by RezDog

Dust control is very important and unrated. The big particles are no big deal as they do not remain airborne. The smaller ones that suspend in the air are the dangerous ones, those are the ones we can breath in. They stay if our lungs for a long time and can cause asthma and allergies. If you have a great extraction system but poor filtration what you actually have is a pump for hazardous material. The bandsaw won’t create small enough particles to become airborne, however your sander is another story. It’s a long winded reply to simply say get a good filter for your vacuum.
:-)

Good point and info.There's a reason that God made these---

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use mine with some pre-filters so that the screw on canisters don't get plugged up.

You'd think it wouldn't take any skill to replace the glass in a picture but I broke the first replacement piece of glass for this vintage picture. I didn't think to take a picture BEFORE the glass was installed but I wasn't going to un-mount it to take a pic: Sorry but this is the best I could manage.



It came from my former brother in laws place, my ex wife and her sister said it had hung on their walls as long as they could remember. While they were born and raised in the Seattle area their family was from Dayton and the surrounding area.

When I saw it, I thought it kind of looked like the Roaring Twenties but what really intrigued me was that this was on the back of it:



The backing is deteriorating corrugated cardboard and the brads were originally installed through the it with the heads hidden. Once I got the brads pulled I found a second layer of pressed cardboard with the print mounted on it/the pressed cardboard is the boarder around the print.

I carefully removed the print and then the broken glass and when moving the print the lower part moved as it wasn't glued in. So I gently lifted the print and this is what I found on the back of the picture:







I'm relatively sure that this print was done in 1914. Why else would the advertisement have the months of the calendar listed as 1914

Anyway it's proudly hanging on my wall. The ex tells me she has another print that was purchased in Dayton and wants me to have it. I hope it's a cool as this one.

That's a gorgeous print!

I let the big rounds sit on the ground for about 12 months.


Rented a 20,000 pound vertical splitter that didn’t even crack the big rounds that are about 3 feet in diameter. So I went at them with more traditional tools and brute force.


And ended up with this pile of big burnable logs and about 6 face cords (2 regular cords) of wood from the branches and trunk pieces the splitter could handle.