Thread: Crazy idea - question

Hi,
It's A disaster, the bag does not stop any dust, it will go strait through only the shavings will be caught and you will not be able to see through the air borne dust and every thing else will be covered.
DAMHIK
Regards

The boss picked up a cheap garden vac for that very purpose at work and it was horrible. The worst part was that when the bag got full it started spitting stuff back out the front.

Bad idea, don't try it.

Did that, I had a stupid stupid idea. All the big stuff went into the bag all the fine stuff went into my lungs.

I thought the same when I very first started. Used a moderately priced one, turned it on and sucked up a ton of chips and whatnot.

Now I know more about dust (thanks to all here, but many to BobL) it's not the big stuff but the fine dust that's going the f#%k you up. This is a sure fire way to generate 4000 billion atoms of the stuff.

You can't see it and it's the cigarettes/asbestos of our sport. Right into those itty bitty alveoli where it will lodge and grow little trees.



The reality is also the impeller gets smashed to absolute pieces in no time flat.

But a second hand dust collector with a pleated cartridge. Worth every cent.

Bigger ID hose and small cyclone - the only way to go with a vac. I have a vested interest!

David

Thanks all. Will try something else

Pick it up, cram into shopping bags and tie the handles - hand it out to people with fireplaces - they'll love you for it. Beats the hell out of newspaper.

Its not a completely crazy idea. At the end of a session in the workshop I will often put on a good quality dust mask, open up the double roller door, 3m sliding door (if I can be bothered) and the personal access door - switch the garden vac into blower mode and then just blow all the dust out of the garage. Its amazing how much dust settles on wood storage areas, open shelves and any horizontal surface. That being said I typically do collect any large shavings with the dust collector first.

One advantage that I do have is the garage opens up onto a rear lane and it is also some distance from the house. The airborne dust quickly gets whisked away. The super fine dust remains suspended for a considerable time, but it is generally days before I get back out there so by that stage it has settled again. Catching dust at the source is obviously the best but a good blast at the end of the day with the garden vac also helps to keep things clean.

Try a drywall dust bag for your shop vac. Lasts 1000x longer before clogging compared to the standard foam/cloth filters in the centre of the canister. The drywall bags fill the canister and have a large filter surface area to handle fine dust better.
Shop-Vac® 2-pack Drywall Bags | Canadian Tire

Drywall dustbags have a rating around 5 microns so they still let all the super fine dust that cannot be seen through the bag wall

Blowing dust out with the shed doors and windows open only works directly on the visible dust particles.

Unless there is a breeze, trying to blow the invisible dust out of a room will be like trying to blow smoke out of a room with a jet of compressed air i.e. it will be a largely a waste of time.

What happens is the smoke simply billows around the jet AND the jet of compressed air will result in an increase the amount of fine dust in the air as it will lift some of the fine dust that has not been collected by a dust extractor into the air and settled out on surfaces in the shed.

This also means you will be instantly covered in dust and become a walking dust chinmey.

It takes around 25 minutes for fine dust levels to fall by half and it is not uncommon for fine dust levels to reach 100 times greater than OHS limits when using compressed air for cleaning. This means it will take around 3 hours to settle down below OHS limits - assuming of course you don't add any more dust or re-disturb the settled dust. Just walking past a flat surface is sufficient to fluff invisible dust into the air

if you rely on passive dust removal using doors and windows it's far better to leave those open while the dust is being made so it has a chance of escape rather than keeping the shed closed and then trying to use compressed air to try and get it out