I have been getting great results on my epoxy now that I have the temperature and thickness of the coats under control. What are people doing to control dust? I have a basement shop that is dusty. I have tried the spray bottle. Does a rod drying box help with dust control? Should I think about making one to achieve a finer finish? What does everyone do? I am looking for insights.
Rob

Boston, MA

Rob,
Get yourself a leaf blower.
Open the windows in your basement, start up the leaf blower and blow all of the dust out of the windows.

Then, frequently change the filters in your furnace. Be sure to do the dust blowing about two days before you do any finish work so that all fo the remaining dust has settled.

You can laugh, but actually getting rid of the existing dust is the first step to eliminate the dust.

Another thing that works pretty well is to get a couple of box fans, put a furnace filter in front of the fans, Take a vacuum cleaner, put the hose on the blow side, and then put a couple of wands on the end of the hose and also add a crevice cleaner on the end.
This will give you some high pressure air. Go over all of the surfaces in the basement to blow all of the dust off of everything. This in conjunction with open windows and the fans on the front of the box filters will go a long way toward eliminating the dust.

Finally, if you can make some changes in your basement, so that you can place a barrier - separate room, with an outlet for dusty air - around all of your dust creating items.

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By the way, the leaf blower really does a great job of getting rid of dust - don't laugh.
I couple of years ago, my wife and I took an extended vacation. While gone, we hired a contractor to go through the house, remove all of the cottage cheese finish on the ceilings, and then put a flat finish back on the ceilings. The contractor did an excellent job, and a relatively good job of clean up.
Although we had the furniture covered up with covers, and things removed from walls, there was still a bit of a sheen of sheet rock dust pretty much everywhere in the house.
So, on one of the first days after returning, and on a day when my wife was gone - I opened up every window and door in the house. I filled my leaf blower with gas, started it up, and then - starting in the room furthest away from any door - proceeded to dedust the house with the leaf blower. As I proceeded from each room toward the doors, I closed each door behind me. Then, I had all of the fans turned on high, along with a nice fall breeze blowing through the house to remove the fumes from the blower.

It did an excellent job to get rid of the abrasive sheet rock dust that had been left behind from the contractors really quite good cleaning efforts.

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Finally, also in the finish room area, I keep a good air cleaner running on high for a couple of days before doing any finish work. This air cleaner with its charcoal filter does an excellent job of moving the air in the finish area and trapping any residual dust that might be remaining from any previous work.

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Several years ago, I also moved my dusty work to a separate building. i.e. lathe work, sanding work etc. are done in a different building than where the gue, wrapping and finish work.
Keep the dust out of the finish area building and then you don't have to worry about managing the dust.

Take care
Roger

One way you can make a "clean room" on the cheap, is by making your room with poly for the walls. If you do a search or check on some contractor suppy sites, you'll find a unit sold for drywall sanding that does just that. It consists of clear poly for the walls and expanding aluminum poles with no-mar surfaces that support the poly and attach it at the ceiling and floor. My 2 upstairs rooms are my rod shop. The one room houses the power tool (wood lathe, hobby lathe, drill press, belt/disc sander) and the other is my "clean room" for wrapping, epoxy, etc. I took a sheet of poly and attached velcro aloong the edge of the rectangle and the oppsite half (hook vs loop) to the door frame. It's attached when needed and a "draft snake seals the bottom. I use a home-made dust collection system as well. I wipe the place down with anti static sheets and/or dusting sheet (swiffer, etc). Hope this helps. Someday I'll actually take and post photos!

Ray Mazza
Midstream Custom Rods
Utica, NY
13501

Rob,

My old shop was my basement that also doubled as my woodworking shop ( no choice, based on limited space). I would put a fan in one window, fire up the compreesor and start from one end with a blow gun ( never thought of the leaf blower, great idea Roger, I love it) and blow the room out several times, wait at least a few hour. then about an hour before putting finish on I would use a spray bottle with water and wet the bench surface, walls near my bench, ceiling and the floor. It's an old autobody trick used for painting cars that I learned from a previous career. It actualy made a huge difference. Just a thought

I used to get a water hose and wash down the walls of the spray booth.

Bill - willierods.com

I`m going to have to think about that ! I have two shop vacs in my shop. They are set to where the most dust is made and i do a good cleaning every couple of weeks. I guess it is time to modernize and bring the old leaf blower in.



Bill



Ooooops, I have glass block windows I better not. That would really tick my wife off.

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

Bill,
A sledge hammer would make short work of the glass block windows. (Just Kidding)

Matt,
I do exactly what you suggest with my work shop where I do my sanding etc. After finishing work for the day, and after vacuuming and sweeping up the floor, I open all of the doors, and use the big compressor with the 5 foot wand on the end to blow any remaining dust out of the door.
With the 5 foot wand, you can reach into the corners, and crevices, and get to the floor and back in the corners with out stooping. I also go over all of the wood working equipment, drills, saws, lathes, as well as the motors and blow all of the dust off of the benches, out of the motors, etc.

Even though you sweep and vacuum, there is still a significant amount of dust around the shop that goes out the door with high pressure air and the long wand used each day. By the way, another good thing to do about every couple days of working in the shop is to empty your shop vacuum, and use high pressure air to blow the collected dust out of the filter in the vacuum. Many times folks use a shop vacuum that has a filter so plugged, that it is not doing very much dust collecting. It is just @#$%& against the plugged up filter in the vacuum. Cork dust and other very fine dust can plug up a vacuums filter more quickly than one might suppose.


Take care

Roger

My goal this year was to eliminate dust everywhere. It started after we had new flooring put in the basement and flooring guys sanded the concrete to level it(long story that I really don't want to talk about).
Anyway. I just bought an Onedia dust deputy , [store.oneida-air.com], for the shop vac. I've used it for about a month and filled a 5 gal bucket with chips and dust. My filter is still clean. Also installed a Shop Vac air cleaner from Woodcraft. It filters the air in my shop about every 30 min. since it's a small shop. now I'm pretty much dust free.

Gary,
Where have you been. I have looked for a lot of different products, but have never seen this one. It does look like it would be a very slick idea.

I do have a couple of the water filters for my shop vacuum when doing sheet rock sanding. But these water filters will not work for cork and wood dust, because it floats.

Thanks for the great idea. I will pick one up and hopefully reduce the number of filter cleanings required in my shop vacuum.

Roger

Plus that bad boy cyclone collector is on sale this month. and if you check with some of the bigger local restaurants you can get a bucket and lid for free.
I tried one of those cheap cyclone lids and it worked OK but this thing 20 times better.

I'm with Roger on the leaf blower. During a father /son cleanup at a high school baseball field I cranked up my leaf blower and attacked the storage room/announcers booth building. My blower says it blows at 200mph. I came out of that place and there was so much dust in the air it looked like the building was on fire. We all got a good laugh and it worked like a charm.

You could build yourself a dryer box so that you won't have that dust that is floating around in your shop from settleing on the fresh finish. I built mine out of plexiglas so i could get good light into the box and I can close it up so the air inside is dead and not moving. I use a couple strings of christmas tree lights to distribute the heat evenly in the box. I have a thermometor (sp) so I can see the temp inside. I wired the string up to a wall type variable light switch so I can adjust the light (temp). Concerning your light strings, you need to hurry to get incandecant lights because our government is slowly making them go away and be replaced by LED which won't give you any heat.
As for my wood shop, I am finishing up my dust collection system with a large Oneda cyclone vac and 6" pvc S&D pipe on the ceiling (about 100' total). It was getting tough on me with all the sawdust in the shop and breathing that dusty air. It is not cheap, but my health is worth it. It was getting too cumbersome wearing a mask trying to work on the table saw, lath and the rest of my shop tools.

Kerry do you have any pictures of your rod dryer?

Boston, MA