I do woodturning in my basement and the wood flying off the lathe builds up quickly. Maybe once a week I do an 80% cleaning, blowing all the dust and chips off the walls, the equipment and the floor and sweeping up. Then the next day, after turning, everything is dusty again with a pile of chips on the floor. Is there a way around this cycle? Or is this just part of the process? Leaving the area piled with chips is not an option for me. Psychologically I can operate better in a clean room, and I'm less likely to track wood detritus into the house.
I have never seen an effective dust control system for a lathe, although that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I just shop vac up everything I can at the end of the day and call it good.
The main advantage I've found to working on my lathe, as opposed to other tools, is that the majority of the waste produced is easier to pile up and dispose of. That said, it also occupies more volume unless you take time to compress it.
In terms of dust and finer shavings from sanding/scraping, you may be able to mitigate that a little if you were to rig up a DC/vac nozzle to use.
I new a old woodworker who created a complete enclosure around his lathe that was made of a heavy weight plastic sheeting. He would blow low pressure air into the bag to inflate this bag (it had zippered door) to keep inflated and it had a dust collector that was sucking out the fine wood dust as he worked. When he was done, he would exist the bag, zip the door closed and begin using a tube extended from the opening to the dust collector to pick everything else. It was not perfect but it did contain the mess inside the bag. I really don't know how well it worked as I never saw him do a final cleanup. Also working inside that cloud of moving dust had to be uncomfortable. He did where a full face dust mast. By the way if you come up with THE SOLUTION, you can make a fortune marketing it.
I have never seen an effective dust control system for a lathe, although that doesn t mean one doesn t exist. I just shop vac up everything I can at the end of the day and call it good.
My shop is small, and my lathe is close to other tools. My table saw, and my wood storage shelves take a direct hit while I am turning.
While nothing keeps it all clean, I do throw a drop cloth over the saw, and have a drop cloth curtain in front of the shelves.
This keeps the bulk of the mess out in the open. Makes for a little easier clean up.
I know for a fact that I spend more time cleaning than I do woodworking.
I use the 4" hose to my dc, with a magnet attached, and stick different places on the lathe depending on what Im doing. The primary goal is to capture as much dust, not chips. Mainly helps when sanding. For chips, I made a roman blind from heavy window screen material, mounted to the ceiling. I roll it down when needed in that particular direction, then roll it up out of the way when not. Comes down to about lathe bed level and is 6 ft long I think. Its about 3-4 ft from the lathe, enough for me to work in between. Stops all the chips from shooting across the shop, and the screen material allows airflow but stops the chips, so heat and ac are not blocked. Has been an excellent solution for me.
I have an air cleaner near the tailstock end of my lathe, it gets a lot of the dust. Those are old pics, I don't have that lathe anymore, the workbench is long gone, and the air cleaner now has a RAS on it. https://www.lumberjocks.com/projects/15760
I have another air cleaner mounted on the ceiling 10 - 12 feet away. Together they get most of the dust, I'll never get it all.
I clean up the mess as I go, I see shavings on the floor as a trip hazard, and stepping on shavings just kicks up dust.
Rink, as you have asked, it is "just part of the process". A dust collector does help while turning. I also use my dust collector after turning to clean up the mess.
I have a track on the ceiling that goes around 3 sides of my lathe. On the track, I have clear shower curtains. I pull them around the lathe and they capture the shavings and let them drop to the floor inside the curtained area. It reduces the floor space that I need to sweep to a very small area. When sanding, I have a 4" duct on an adjustable platform, hooked up to my dust collector. It captures almost all of the dust.
Thanks for the ideas! I do have a dust collector with a 4" hose that I use when sanding. I can't imagine how bad the dust would be if I didn't have that.
I do like the idea of some kind of curtain or roll down screen to minimize the spread of detritus. I'm going to think about how to use that idea.
A 6" hose with a good bell mouth connected to a 5hp cyclone (turn a bell mouth on your lathe and build the stand to hold it yourself) is very effective in collecting both fine dust and large chips.
Because most of my lathe work is spindle work, dust collection is far more easy and effective than for bowl work.
I use my 4" hose on a piece of plastic pipe and it collect ALL the dust and much of the stuff tossed off during turning. It's on an adjustable stand behind the collector.
To improve the efficiency, the pipe can be moved to be under the piece, rather than behind it.
I keep a bungee attached to each side of my lathe bed. I can usually get my 4" hose close, not always close enough to get it all, but some is better than none. Sometimes it just gets in the way. I try to use it for more than sanding.
hairy, I found the addition of the Rube Goldberg pipe set up really cranked up the collection. Especially for small items, since you could, kinda, wrap it around them.
The other plus was the stand, which lets me move it forward and back to accommodate different sized items.
The home-made locking knobs hold it just tight enough to keep it in position, but still allow me to move it around a bit.
I think you can capture dust but you'd need the vacuum of a decompressing airplane window at 30K feet to grab the chips created from turning a bowl IMHO. But sweeping up or vacuuming the chips off of the floor is easy.
I think you can capture dust but you d need the vacuum of a decompressing airplane window at 30K feet to grab the chips created from turning a bowl IMHO. But sweeping up or vacuuming the chips off of the floor is easy.
It looks like Kelly's collector is the best so far. It's up over the top of the piece he's turning, therefore will manage to remove over 75% or more of the chips. But, it wouldn't remove very many chips in bowl turning.
It's been my experience that when turning bowls, a dust collector would have to be mounted just under my chin to grab the chips being tossed out toward my face, neck and chest.
The other collector hoods work fine for sanding as most of the dust is flying off in a downward direction. To me, that's the only time a dust collection system would be worth the expense and floor space it requires.
Gwilki and Ocean's idea's of isolating the chips is the easiest, least expensive, and most practical way of collecting the chips. And please, keep the chips off the floor because you wouldn't want to trip over them….....Jerry (in Tucson)
Lots of good suggestions so far. More inspiration might be found here.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
LumberJocks Woodworking Forum
2.5M posts
96K members
Since 2006
A forum community dedicated to professional woodworkers and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about shop safety, wood, carpentry, lumber, finishing, tools, machinery, woodworking related topics, styles, scales, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!