Craig’s Crafts

I finally got a chance to try our my Jet mini-lathe the other day. I chucked a short piece of holly culled from my woodpile. All I was trying to do was put those hours of watching Woodturning Basics on the DIY Network to some use. I had safety glasses on, the kind that fit over my regular glasses. I made all the adjustments for setup and then started with a large gouge to true it up. As the bark peeled away it revealed the beautiful white wood underneath. I had my box-fan filter running and it easily pulled the dust away from me. You can often tell if dust is getting out of control, as you can smell it. This was like watching it on TV, until I misjudged a cut when I tried to trim off the bump a small twig left on the limb. As the gouge dug in, a tiny sliver of wood flew up and bounced off my forehead. It stung a little, but it wasn’t until I was washing up that I felt something snag my wash cloth.

I took a closer look and after doing a little touch test (sounds better than picking at it) I found a splinter had been deposited by the chip. I figured I could just wash it off, or maybe it’ll work itself out. No such luck. It stayed in, and finally I just picked at it until it came out. It was about the size of a pin point, barely visible except with a magnifying glass.

So now I’m looking for a full-face shield. I’ll let you know what I get.

I had a bad experience with a splinter last summer, thrown from my shredder. I was wearing a full face shield (mounted on a hard hat with hearing protection as well) and it either flew under, or as small as it was, right through, the wire-mesh shield. It hit me in the lip and it took about 3 weeks to worry that thing out.

Wounds from wood are some of the worst you can get, taking much longer to heal so long as any particle remains in the skin. The Geneva Convention bans the use of wooden bullet. Now I know why.

So I started to build my dust collector for my radial-arm saw (RAS), and began to get together the materials to build it. This shouldn’t take long, after all, it was just a small box with a hole cut in it. The wood was no problem, and I had plenty of 4″ hose to make the short connector, and then I pulled out the 4″ OD plastic pipe I had found last summer laying beside the road. It had been set aside for just this type of project, and after trueing up the end, I cut off a 5″ section to become the adapter end that my Jet dust collector (DC) needs.

That’s when I found out I had rescued a 4.5″ pipe.

No problem, I’ll just cut a slice out of the pipe, squeeze it together, and with the help of some HVAC tape and a couple of hose clamps, I’ve got my 4″ connector.

I did a few high school Geometry calculations, and figured out the circumference of a 4″ pipe should be 12.5″. All I had to do was mark off 12.5″ around the 4.5″ pipe, remove the excess, and when pressed together, I’ve got a 4″ pipe.

Ever try to roll a piece of slick plastic pipe across your workbench and not have it slip? I solved the measuring problem by borrowing my wife’s measuring tape from her sewing basket (it really was a basket!), and using that to mark my cuts.

Since I had always intended to make short connector adapters for all my tools that could be hooked up to the Jet DC, I cut three more slices from the pipe, marked them up and then used my bandsaw to remove the required slices.

Then I got out the tape, cut a 8″ section and tried bending the pipe into the smaller circumference. This is a three, or better yet, a four handed job. That pipe didn’t want to bend to my will, to I decided to weaken it. As you can see in the photos, I went back to the bandsaw and made a series of shallow cuts. This isn’t quite as effective on plastic as it is on wood, but it did make it easier to bend. I could apply about 1/2 the tape, leaving the waxed paper on the rest, squeeze the pipe into shape, and then pull the rest of the waxed paper off with my teeth as I rolled the pipe against my workbench to press the tape down. It took a couple of tries at first, but ultimately I got them all done.

Then I cut the flexible 4″ pipe to about 2′ lengths, made their connections to the PVC pipe adapters, and then I began to make the wooden box for the RAS. By then it was past 7PM, so I called it a day.

Here is a couple of shots of the reduced diameter adapters:

This guy did a great job, but to build it you need a furnace fan.

D-I-Y Shop Air Cleaner

Before I started on the Radial-arm Saw Dust Collector, I decided I needed to do something about cleaning up my shop’s air.
On of my woodworking magazines recently did a test of dust collectors, and as a basic comparison, or perhaps as a joke, they duct-taped a high-effencency furnace filter to a box fan and included it as part of the testing. I have a dust collector that I can connect to all of my big dust generators, but I didn’t have anything to capture the airborne dust before my lungs did.

The article suggested just duct-taping a furnace filter to the fan, but I couldn’t stand the idea of un- and re-taping everytime I wanted to change the filter. So I made a frame to hold it.

It’s pretty obvious how to make the frame, so just measure your filter and make it. I took off the front and back grills and was able to use screws to attach the frame from the back (neatness counts) and then reattached the rear grill. I cut a notch for the cord, but at some point I’m going to replace the short 5′ cord it came with with a longer one to make it more portable.

In use I just place the fan on a table or bench next to the saw, and turn it on high. I let it run for 30-60 minutes after I quit work just to help reduce the dust that settles out.

If you want to see the original article, it’s in the Wood Magazine, October, 2006 issue, “Air Scrubbers under $300.”