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Shop Dust - How much do you really have?

Joined
Jan 8, 2020
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Location
Bloomfield, New Jersey
Hi,

I just setup a Wen air cleaner in the shop, and as other have posted before me, I went through the shop this morning with a dust mask and a blow gun. I'm monitoring the dust using this cool particle meter I bought from Banggood.com:
XFNka55.jpg

I had it up to 150 pm2.5 particles and it's slowly dropping as the air cleaner does it's thing and far off dust settles again. I'll go around a few more times with the blow gun today until the meter stays in the green after blowing dust.

I bought this particle meter for a different use, but now I think I'll hang it where I can see it while turning.

Note: There are other particle meters that look like consumer products for about the same price.
 

odie

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Panning for Montana gold, with Betsy, the mule!
Are you monitoring your particle meter during different times of day, and while turning, and sanding?

The WEN air filter is a worthwhile investment......however, I wonder how much dust is actually captured.....? I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's less than 20%......

I'm only using the WEN during sanding operations, but, I'm using a respirator nearly ALL the time.:D

-----odie-----
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2020
Messages
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Location
Bloomfield, New Jersey
Are you monitoring your particle meter during different times of day, and while turning, and sanding?

The WEN air filter is a worthwhile investment......however, I wonder how much dust is actually captured.....? I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's less than 20%......

I'm only using the WEN during sanding operations, but, I'm using a respirator nearly ALL the time.:D

-----odie-----
I'm sure planning to keep an eye on it. It took about 30 minutes to knock down the dust from the first blow from +250 to 7-8. Before I started, the dust was about constant at 15.

hwk8MEl.jpg


You can see the discoloration on the rear filter. I bought a replacement set when I ordered the unit, so I'm ready to replace it after I'm satisfied that I've gotten the loose dust collected.

Most of my turning is wet and I don't bother with a dust mask unless I start seeing dust while cutting or when sanding. I just need to mount it closer to the ceiling. My shop's in the basement of my 1924 home with 78" to the rafters. Maybe the Budget Committee will approve having a service line run out to the garage this year... I'd love to have my shop out of the house!
 
Joined
Mar 1, 2020
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Location
Lebanon, TN
I have the Jet equivalent, ceiling mounted. I also bought the washable outer filter, which looks like it does a pretty good job as the internal filters look very clean.

I'm mainly a flat wood worker, with dust extraction on most of my tools, but it's amazing how much dust gets caught on the air cleaner filter after a couple of months.

The shelves around my shop stay relatively dust free, which indicates, there's no a lot of dust that doesn't get captured.

I often set it on the timer and let it run for about 4 hours after I leave my garage for the day.

I'd love to get a dust/particle meter, but every time I get close to buying one, I find something else I'd rather have, or think I need.
 
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
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Location
Shingletown CA
I put a 16" louvered exhaust fan behind my lathe It is much better at getting rid of the sanding dust than the two box air filters I had on the ceiling. Probably not good in the winter though. The box fans were hard to get to and plugged up too fast. I also run a 5 micron filtered dust collector while turning. The shop still gets a heavy coat of dust, no matter what I do. Once a month or so, I blow it all out the garage door with a stihl backpack blower!
 
Joined
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Eugene, OR
I have a friend who blows out his shop regularly. His method is to take a 42 inch air plane prop, mount it on a big electric motor, which is on a tripod, bolt the tripod to the floor, open the windows, and then turn on the motor and his blower. Takes about 20 minutes for all the dust to vacate the shop, which I think is 1800 ft. or more...

robo hippy
 

odie

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Hi Odie, the respirator that you use, does it work for flumes also?

Hi Lamar.......No, I don't believe either one is rated for fumes.......I'm using two respirators.......Resp-o-rator and Airstream.

Talk to you later, Lamar. :D

-----odie-----
 
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
Messages
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Location
Cleveland, Tennessee
I use a box fan and furnace filter. I turn it on before I close the shop and run for 2-3 hours. Surprising what it removes. Wife saw this on a remodel job on HGTV. IMHO, only thing that came out useful for the channel.
 
Joined
Feb 6, 2010
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Brandon, MS
The thing about dust is you get it with all operations , yes even green turning. If you have a window close to the lathe you will see it in the sunlight.
I have a JDS and a Jet. The JDS is plugged into the light system so when the main lights go on so does it. The Jet I have to turn on and set the timer which does not always happen:(. When cleaning the shop just blowing it off the shelf and allowing the filter to collect will get a very small amount of it because it settles in dead airspace. Also you will need to vacum the floor. Use that particle detector at floor level and see how much you stir just walking thru the shop.
I am not too sure how much good it does leaving the filters on after closing the shop but that is recommended.
 
Joined
Jul 26, 2016
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The most far-reaching and potent outbreak of dust from the Sahara Desert in decades has begun to significantly affect the Lower 48 states, with air quality deteriorating markedly on the Gulf Coast on Friday. The dust, which hitched a ride along a ribbon of east-to-west winds about 5,000 miles from the Atlantic coast of Senegal and Mauritania, contains enough small particles at low altitudes to make air quality unhealthy, particularly for those with preexisting medical conditions, such as lung and heart ailments and asthma.

You are breathing in dust, pollen, and other organic and inorganic particulates on a daily basis, your bodies natural defense system does a pretty good job getting rid of these foreign materials, however working in a high dust environment can overwhelm your bodies natural defense system.
 
Joined
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Brandon, MS
The most far-reaching and potent outbreak of dust from the Sahara Desert in decades has begun to significantly affect the Lower 48 states, with air quality deteriorating markedly on the Gulf Coast on Friday. The dust, which hitched a ride along a ribbon of east-to-west winds about 5,000 miles from the Atlantic coast of Senegal and Mauritania, contains enough small particles at low altitudes to make air quality unhealthy, particularly for those with preexisting medical conditions, such as lung and heart ailments and asthma.

You are breathing in dust, pollen, and other organic and inorganic particulates on a daily basis, your bodies natural defense system does a pretty good job getting rid of these foreign materials, however working in a high dust environment can overwhelm your bodies natural defense system.


Mike you may be talking apples and oranges but I did not understand where you were coming from on this. For the dust we as woodturners and woodworkers are exposed to there is not only the immediate effect but also the long term.

Immediate: SOB (shortness of breath) due to clogging of airways and nasal allergies. If you are asthmatic you should have already been taking precautions. Also allegies to various woods we work with for which some are already sensitized to to to preexisting allergies.

Long term: the effects we get from repeated exposure to allergens (in this case dust) . Over long periods of time , sometime many years, we become sentized to dust of some or all woods and develop allergies. In addition as we age our capacities to handle dusty conditions usually deteriorate and we then cannot stay in dusty environments as long as we once could. Then there is the fact that if we inhale dust all the time it can fill the bronchioles in the lungs and pack in to stay.

Now the dust from storms affect all of us in a immediate nature but is just something we have to deal with as it happens. Dust in the shop is a fact and must be dealt with on a daily consistent basis.
 

Timothy Allen

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Dust from storms and other natural sources is not something we can control, we can only react to it. Dust in our shops is a predictable product of the processes WE engage in, and thus it is something that we can consciously work to reduce and/or contain/collect...
 

Emiliano Achaval

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hawaiiankoaturner.com
The most far-reaching and potent outbreak of dust from the Sahara Desert in decades has begun to significantly affect the Lower 48 states, with air quality deteriorating markedly on the Gulf Coast on Friday. The dust, which hitched a ride along a ribbon of east-to-west winds about 5,000 miles from the Atlantic coast of Senegal and Mauritania, contains enough small particles at low altitudes to make air quality unhealthy, particularly for those with preexisting medical conditions, such as lung and heart ailments and asthma.

You are breathing in dust, pollen, and other organic and inorganic particulates on a daily basis, your bodies natural defense system does a pretty good job getting rid of these foreign materials, however working in a high dust environment can overwhelm your bodies natural defense system.
Not sure how this fits here Mike. Care to elaborate?
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2020
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Location
Bloomfield, New Jersey
I have a friend who blows out his shop regularly. His method is to take a 42 inch air plane prop, mount it on a big electric motor, which is on a tripod, bolt the tripod to the floor, open the windows, and then turn on the motor and his blower. Takes about 20 minutes for all the dust to vacate the shop, which I think is 1800 ft. or more...

robo hippy
Likely that would also blow down my house ;-)
 
Joined
Jul 26, 2016
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Nebraska
People can turn a variety of materials on a lathe, each of these materials can have an impact on the person doing the turning. plenty of exotic and domestic woods which can be toxic along with polymer materials that woodturners use to stabilize or cast billets out of. You also have a number of turners that imbed a variety of organic and inorganic materials into turned items for decorative effects. Some woodturners are turning different types of soft stones and minerals which can also be a hazard. Plenty of adhesives and compounds used to assemble segmented billets turned on a lathe many of these also have short term and long term affects. Most of this sounds like common sense for experienced woodworkers, for a beginning woodturner air quality is one of those factors they usually learn the hard way unless they are given prior warning. How many newbies start off with a lathe, hand tools and worry about the environment they are turning in until later on when their budget allows? On average you have 150,000 lung cancer deaths each year which is directly attributed to air quality. Compare those numbers to a handful of people that take a billet to the head or cobble a Lichtenberg machine together out of microwave transformers. The air you breathe is one of those unseen environmental elements that people often times do not consider because you can not see it or touch it, much like radiation or electricity that has short term and long term detrimental affects. People in the Northwest were warned about volcanic ash when Mount Saint Helens popped off, much of that ash migrated to the east and contributed to the detriment of many that were unaware or ignored the hazard.

FYI,
The Saharan dust cloud brought dangerously high levels of fine particulate pollution (PM2.5, particles less than 2.5 microns or 0.0001 inch in diameter) and PM10 (particles less than 10 microns in diameter). Air pollution aggravates COVID-19 symptoms, leading to expected increases in hospital admissions from the disease in regions where dust concentrations spike.
 
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