Hello all,

My rod room is in the basement of the cndo I bought a few years ago. This section of the basement is unfinished with exposed overhead insulation and concrete walls/floor. Needless to say dust has been a real problem.

I am working on finishing the rod room and I want to be sure to take dust control into consideration. The room will be fully sheet-rocked and made airtight as possible with full-seal doors and sealed sub-flooring (before the Pergo goes down). I am rigging a bathroom fan on it's side through the wall to positively-pressurize the room by drawing air in through a HEPA filter, so when the door is opened air wants to come out rather than in. In addition to that, a higher-end portable HEPA air cleaner will be in the interior of the room.

The rod lathe will be placed on a 20" x 13.5' surface along one wall. I wanted to do something along the lathe to attract any remaining dust. Is there an electric device that will charge a strip of material and attract dust to it? I understand acrylic can be charged by rubbing silk on it, so I was wondering about running clear acrylic plastic along the lathe(?)

Any ideas about dust control welcome.

Thank you,

Eric

Eric,
The number one rule for dust control in an area where rod finish and wrapping is done is to have NO dust generating activities in the room.

If you do have any dust generating activities associated with your rod building - like drilling cork, tuning or sanding any material - do NOT do it in the same room where you are going to do finish and guide wrap work.

So, if you can not move your dust generating activities to a different building (really the best thing to so) - consider the construction of a separate room for these activities that have a positive wall, door and separate air handling to accommodate any dust generation.

Folks can say what ever they want that they can successfully grind cork and sand cork in the same area where they apply finish and do guide wraps - "good luck with that one".



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In one rod shop that has several folks all working on wrapping and doing finish work, there is one room off to the side that is about 10X20. In this room, all of the dirty work is done. i..e sanders, lathes, saws, etc. There is a very large vacuum in this room, that uses a home made filter system that consists of about 5 furnace filters all in line - in a box that is about 4'X4'. This box is used to capture the sanding dust. There is a dust collection hose running to each of the sanding and cutting areas in the room so that the great majority of dust that is generated, is immediately sucked into the vacuum filters. The outlet of the filter box, is directed through the wall of the sanding room, so that the exhaust air does not get recirculated back into the room.
Also, by having the vacuum system in the big insulated box, and all of the filters in the big box, the greatest amount of noise is also muffled. For in this shop the vacuum is on about 80% of the day, so the noise could get to be very tiring after a few hours.
The door to this room is always kept shut. As you point out, there is more exhaust air going out of the sanding room, than coming in. So, any time that the door to the sanding room is opened, air comes into the room - rather than go out of the room; as a result, no dust from the sanding room will exit to the rod wrapping and finish area.

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Also, in this shop, all of the drying is done on one of the multiple drum dryers that are in the room. The drum dryers are located on the wall above a narrow bench where the finish is applied. The dryer is located inside a cabinet which has a Plexiglas top door hinge on it.
As a rod has finish applied, the switch is turned off on the drum dryer, the dryer door is opened, the rod placed and attached to the drum dryer in 10 seconds or so, and the door to the dryer is closed. There are filters on both ends of the dryer cabinet that allows air to move through the cabinet by heat convection. No additional fans in the dryer to stir up any air while drying. Also, there are several light bulbs in the dryer cabinet to keep the dryer at about 80 degrees when the dryer is in service.

This particular room has a high ceiling with folks moving in and out of the area with no particular need for dust control - other than the standard building heating and air conditioning. The key in this shop is to keep the heavy dust generation - in a sealed room - that has a sealed door between the wrapping- finish area and the sanding and dust generating area.

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In my shop, I essentially do the same thing. The difference is that I have a separate building where I have all of my dust generating tools. IE. lathes, sanders, cutters etc. So, all of the dust generating activities are carried out in the separate building. Then, before bringing any rods back into the guide wrapping and finish room, all of the rods, and components are blown off with high pressure air, so that the items are free of dust when they come back into the room.

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Summary -
The best solution to avoid dust contamination on a rod under construction, is to keep dust generating activities well away from any guide wrap or finish application areas.

Good luck
Roger

Roger is right, the best way is to separate the dust-creating activities from wrapping and finishing. You can research on the board for a number of discussions and Tom has had a number of suggestions, and an article or 2 on this subject so there are lots of ideas. You didn't mention that you would be sanding/turning cork in this space but if you have no other choice, a couple of suggestions:

Do have a vacuum device at the point of turning and sanding. The HEPA filter alone will not be able to handle all of the dust created from this. You can rig up something simple with a shop vac, or look into any number of dust collection systems at Penn State Industries, or other woodworking sites. REaming and sanding cork create the most dust to worry about. Guide grinding and blank cutting come in second.

Wipe down your wrapping area often. The dust from your skin and other sources will still settle around your rod wrapper and it's easy to pick this up while wrapping and doing the everyday things. Your fan solutions should help this but won't eliminate it. Your charging idea works along the lines of a truman cell air cleaner, but particles will have to be pushed to the charged area as they won't be attracted from any reasonable distance. Simple cleaning should be ample protection against the dust particles, along with your planned fan solution.

Sounds like you are on the right track but do some more reading on the board.

Terry

Thank you gentlemen.

There is a door in the rod room to a 10' x 5' Seal/Paint/Tying Room. There's an airbrush spray booth in there that is vented to the outside, and it has it's own HEPA-filtered air draw that does not pass through the Rod Room. I will have my fly-tying materials in there as well to keep those particles out of the Rod Room.

On the other side of the long wall of the rod room is my Wood Shop. The entrance to the Wood Shop is about 12' from the entrance of the Rod Room, and I plan on placing an intermediate door between those two halves of the basement. The wood shop has .5 micron dust collection and air flitration in there, and has a window fan venting to the outside with a filtered air draw from the basement (that does not pass through the Rod Room), so I think I have the desired "negative pressure" in that dusty room to keep it from circulating in the basement.

Reaming/sanding of grips will be done in the woodshop on a 12 x 20 lathe.

I will research the points you mentioned -- thank you both again for your feedback.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2012 12:25PM by Eric Roach.

Sounds like you got a good start of a nice building set up

I'm jealous

If you can bring them up there are some nice pictures of shops on the photo page May give you some ideas

Bill - willierods.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2012 02:25PM by bill boettcher.

Eric,
How much area do you have to work with in total? Don't waste your time trying to put everything in one room. Keep the work areas separate from your wrap and finish room. I have my work shop in my basement and my wrapping and finish room is on my third floor.

Dave
East Bay Custom Fly Rods

Eric I think you have a good design for the space you have and separated the turning and sanding area from the rod room. There are lots of good pictures of other shop implementations that maybe you can pick up a few other ideas on. You're in better shape than a lot of builders that don't have the luxury of dedicating a space to the craft.

Terry

Yea
The living room is not a good place to build Dooooo

Bill - willierods.com

Much of the dust in homes comes from humans sheding dry skin, cloth furniture, cotton and wool clothing, carpets, etc. I always try to wear synthetic material clothing when doing finish work to cut down as much as possible on dust.

Randolph,
On that same vein - it helps a great deal if
1. You take a good shower every day.
2. You wash your hands with soap and a scrub brush every time you go into the rod room, or take a bathroom break.

Leave the dead skin cells in rooms other than the rod room.

Roger

good hygene is essential!! :>)

No foolin'. You would be surprised how much debris dead skin creates. Even just washing your hands before wrapping makes a big difference No lotions though. Greases up the thread and will cause finish issues.

White china markers also cause an amazing amount of particles so try and clean those off with an old rubber band dipped in alcohol. Just drag it over the mark and it comes right off without getting on your fingers.

Terry

I use a Q'tip dipped in water or alcohol to clean up the white china marks where I place the guides. Never thought about a rubber band. Will have to give it a try.

for years I used my lathe and finished rods in the same room (basement of my old house) never had an issue. I did all the lathe work, cleaned up and finished the next day when there was no dust flying. you just have to be careful not to kick any up. if there is any around you cannot clean hit it with a squirt bottle to keep it in place.

i do as Eric says and keep a bottle around and just before I finish I squirt the area good

Bill - willierods.com