Cliff Posted April 20, 2018 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2018 Time to do some cheap dust collection runs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted April 21, 2018 Report Share Posted April 21, 2018 I like my pvc ducting. I don't think I'll ever go metal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Posted April 22, 2018 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2018 3 hours ago, Chestnut said: I like my pvc ducting. I don't think I'll ever go metal. I think it will be fine for my harbor freight collector. But once I upgrade to something more powerful (probably 2 years) I'll do something better. Or at least, bigger diameter. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drzaius Posted April 22, 2018 Report Share Posted April 22, 2018 7 hours ago, Chestnut said: I like my pvc ducting. I don't think I'll ever go metal. I check into using PVC, but almost all my ducts are 6", 7" or 8" & around here, it's a harder to get PVC & fittings above 4" that don't cost a fortune. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gee-dub Posted April 22, 2018 Report Share Posted April 22, 2018 7 hours ago, drzaius said: I check into using PVC, but almost all my ducts are 6", 7" or 8" & around here, it's a harder to get PVC & fittings above 4" that don't cost a fortune. Really? PVC 6" wye on the internet $22, Norfab 6" wye $140. Even a decent spiral 6" wye around here is $70. I do see what you mean when you go above 6" in PVC. What a price jump; almost double! Glad I bought lots of spares before the price on PVC jumped some years back. I got 10' sticks for about $9. I see they are $17 now. I haven't had to buy anything since and still have some 10' sticks, 45's and wyes in the rafters What are people using that is less expensive than PVC? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted April 22, 2018 Report Share Posted April 22, 2018 Some 26 Ga hvac ducting is strong enough for under 3 hp collectors and isn't expensive. When i was talking to someone else about pvc ducting i figured out that the prices are very regionally based and probably because of code and geology. If you live in rocky soil odds are there isn't going to be any demand for larger pvc because people won't dig it in them selves also based off the codes that require sizes or don't allow you to do it your self. I can buy up to 6" sdr35 off the shelf and could order 8" if i wanted to. For my shop i didn't need anything larger than 6" beings that I'd only ever have 1 gate open at a time. Size the ducts to the air that will flow through the duct not the max the collector will flow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SawDustB Posted April 22, 2018 Report Share Posted April 22, 2018 2 hours ago, gee-dub said: Really? PVC 6" wye on the internet $22, Norfab 6" wye $140. Even a decent spiral 6" wye around here is $70. I do see what you mean when you go above 6" in PVC. What a price jump; almost double! Glad I bought lots of spares before the price on PVC jumped some years back. I got 10' sticks for about $9. I see they are $17 now. I haven't had to buy anything since and still have some 10' sticks, 45's and wyes in the rafters What are people using that is less expensive than PVC? Keep in mind that some of us are north of the border - I think @drzaius is in Alberta. Many options that are inexpensive in the US are not the same in Canada. By the time you try to ship something here and possibly pay customs fees on it, you're better off finding an alternative. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Cliff Posted May 7, 2018 Author Popular Post Report Share Posted May 7, 2018 Took me a week to start building the sawstop, went pretty smoothly. I think there are a few things they could have improved. Like the power box thing clearly requires a left handed person. The cast iron wings were very annoying to get within an acceptable flatness. I searched the internet to see how the hell to get them right because I had a 16th inch dip in the middle of each wing. An exhaustive internet search sent me right back to this site where someone had the same issue years ago and the response was, "hey you can bend cast iron just a little bit." That did the trick. I attached a bolt, bent it to be flat for the next bolt, and repeated until it was nearly perfect. Then the rails sorted out the end corners, I had to bend the cast iron up just a tad at those corners. Anyway, I went on to dust collection. I thought I needed 4" pipe because the outlet on the HF collector was 4". So I bought everything, came home only to realize that the outlet on the collector was 5" and I had reduced it 2 years ago. Oh well. The runs went pretty ok. I doubt it's super efficient, but it was nearly free with the Menards 11% rebate from the flooring materials. If I am unhappy with the performance then next year I'll get a collector and scale up the piping. I also ordered a couple of floor sweeps. One for each side of the shop. Finally wrapped up the Sawstop with the overarm dust collection. It was thoroughly inspected by the new dog. Today I went through the regular setup on the saw, except literally everything was dead perfect from the factory. My last saw it took me 3 hours to set up and it was still never perfect - plus it routinely wrecked itself for fun. I'm very much looking forward to using this thing. First cut, resulted in no visible dust that I could see. And btw, I literally could not tell that I was sawing walnut or anything. It was like I had no blade in, because I felt no resistance. Took one piece and made a groove down the middle for the framing square, then attached both to the walls. So now that I have a saw that rocks. I have the following shop projects planned: 1. Finishing materials and glue cabinet 2. 6 and 12" F clamp rack (based on the stumpy nubs one a bit) 3. Handtool cabinet with plenty of room for expansion. 4. A better and bigger charging station/drill holding thing 5. A router table cabinet. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chet Posted May 7, 2018 Report Share Posted May 7, 2018 14 hours ago, Cliff said: Like the power box thing clearly requires a left handed person. I didn't have a problem with this... Oh thats right I am a lefty. We need more wide angle pictures so we can make sure you are setting your shop up correctly. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coop Posted May 14, 2018 Report Share Posted May 14, 2018 Looking good Cliff but please straighten that black level! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Posted May 15, 2018 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2018 20 hours ago, K Cooper said: Looking good Cliff but please straighten that black level! If it was still in my shop I'd make sure it was crooked and send you a pic everyday. But it's not. It was just left behind by my stepfather from the floor build 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Cliff Posted August 10, 2018 Author Popular Post Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 Been making quality of shop life improvements the past couple of months. Of course, working 20 hours/week overtime has made it difficult to get anything done fast. After building 3 raised dog food bowls I knew it was time to really try to tackle my organization issues before going forward on any new projects. A quick chisel rack (possibly to be replaced when Cremona does his hand tool cabinet build) I started building the stumpy nubs clamp rack that was 3 tiers and had all these hinges. Well it didn't work out well. First I'm an idiot and thought.. you know, I got no plywood but I have 1000 bd ft of walnut. Well, there is a real good reason for not building this sort of thing out of real wood, and I can't believe how deep I got into it before realizing that grain direction makes it real stupid hard to make these fingers without breaking them. I ended up with something that was quite a bit from where I started, nowhere near perfect and the worst finish job I've ever done (on account of it took me weeks to get these done and I was no longer interested in making them pretty.) One of the smaller 12 inch clamp racks (there is another but I till haven't sanded the plugs flush and put finish on) And one of my tape measure dispensers - I have 3 in the shop right now and want at least 2 more. Here is another, a whole 3 feet away above the jointer Then I built a small offcut shelving unit of sorts. I had all these engineered lumber 2x4's laying around from the floor build, put them to good use. This is about 8 foot long, 30 inches deep. Unfortunately I don't have enough plywood sitting around to make the shelves, so I used what I had. And here it is loaded up with a lot of offcuts and the top is project wood stickered for the next thing I'm doing. It will also be a good place to put my crosscut sled when I'm not using it. And you can see I added another tape measure holder here as well. The left side of this shelving unit is my cutting board materials. That's going to be an entire upcoming weekend I'm sure. And then of course I spent my entire last weekend slabbing lumber. 600 bdft. I'll spend this saturday building a roof over this as I was unable to keep the tree shape for the 33" walnut log because the saw mill was 24" capacity. So each of the boards closest to the camera there are a minimum of 14-17" wide. The back are all 14 or so, with the back bottom being 16' long, with another 8' stack on top of it. And yeah, the 33" diameter, 12' log had to have a giant section cut out of the middle due to the nails. So I got some shorter slabs than I'd have liked. And yeah I gotta get in there and trim those weeds covering the entire back of the stack. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coop Posted August 10, 2018 Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 Dang dude, you been busy! Food for thought. I built my cover using 1 1x4’s as the frame, uprights and cross pieces across the top, just big enough to enclose the slabs. Then bought black landscape fabric to cover the sides. This provides air circulation but provides rain protection for the sides. Then I laid corrugated metal panels over the top, anchored with building blocks or anything handy. I still have some under this after 4 years and have had to replace the fabric only once. All of the slabs are up off the concrete on building blocks and stickered. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Posted August 10, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 3 minutes ago, K Cooper said: Dang dude, you been busy! Food for thought. I built my cover using 1 1x4’s as the frame, uprights and cross pieces across the top, just big enough to enclose the slabs. Then bought black landscape fabric to cover the sides. This provides air circulation but provides rain protection for the sides. Then I laid corrugated metal panels over the top, anchored with building blocks or anything handy. I still have some under this after 4 years and have had to replace the fabric only once. All of the slabs are up off the concrete on building blocks and stickered. I hadn't thought of the landscaping fabric, I'll have to look into that. We've got leftover 20 foot tin roofing material from the machine shed build 10 years ago so that will be my top. I do have to make it bigger than the stack though, I have another 6' x 55" crotch piece that I need to get chainsaw milled that will need to fit in here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coop Posted August 10, 2018 Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 At first I attached the fabric with a staple gun. I’m so gullible and lazy. Gentle breezes soon made me look like a fool. Now I use roofing nails with the plastic washers and it works great. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Swanson Jr. Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 @Cliff I'm new to this forum but not too other WW forums and I literally feel your pain with other posters. Everyone wants to be "the guy" that discovers the fatal flaw in your (or any other) project. It's human nature I guess. I don't spend as much time in forums as a used to for that exact reason. You could post about using a 6" clamp to pull 2 pieces together for a glue up and before you know it you've got 30 clamping "engineers" telling you how they would've done it. Meanwhile your glue up dried 3 days ago and looks perfect, so you must have done something right, right? Everyone means well and I get that but it can get very frustrating. Everyone is an expert on everything. (Full disclosure, I'm just as guilty of doing this as anyone else). When I was putting my shop together I ran a few new circuits. I put in about 8 4-plex outlet boxes most about 4' up from the floor. I don't have any idea if it meets code or not. I banged it out in a day and did clean work. They've worked flawlessly for almost 10 years now. At the time I thought it was too many outlets. Now I wish I would've doubled it! Anyway, looks like you took the time and money to do things right and you are going to have one sweet, comfortable shop when all is said and done. Kudos to you and your friend for a job well done! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gee-dub Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 35 minutes ago, applejackson said: Everyone wants to be "the guy" that discovers the fatal flaw in your (or any other) project. It's human nature I guess. I don't spend as much time in forums as a used to for that exact reason. I make liberal use of the "block" feature on forums for these happy (read sarcasm) campers. This has allowed me to return to forums I had previously written off. There are some folks I just really don't need to hear from. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Swanson Jr. Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) @gee-dub I might have comes off a little crabbier than I meant to. Most people just want to help, but some use the ruse of wanting to help to show off that they know more than others do. Comes with the territory, I guess. Take care! Edited August 20, 2018 by applejackson Typo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wdwerker Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 I try to offer my approach as one way to do something. Even if I'm not explicitly clear at the time there is always more than one way to do things. The thing I find the most frustrating are people that are stubbornly looking for a validation of some shortcut they have either heard of or dreamed up. Even when multiple seasoned craftsmen try to explain methods & proven techniques they want to argue about it. I think we all may be guilty of this at times. So even if it's not clear at times please consider any approach or opinion I offer as merely one way I know has worked for me. I've learned a lot the hard way by making time consuming & expensive mistakes and I'm trying to help others from repeating them. I hope my intentions haven't come across as an irritating know it all. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chestnut Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 11 minutes ago, wdwerker said: Even when multiple seasoned craftsmen try to explain methods & proven techniques they want to argue about it. I think we all may be guilty of this at times. Guilty. Some times people need to make their own mistakes to learn why. I'm one of those people. It's very rare but some times i have found techniques that improve on common convention (not necessarily woodworking). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chet Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 1 hour ago, wdwerker said: The thing I find the most frustrating are people that are stubbornly looking for a validation of some shortcut they have either heard of or dreamed up. Even when multiple seasoned craftsmen try to explain methods & proven techniques they want to argue about it. Never a truer statment. 57 minutes ago, Chestnut said: Some times people need to make their own mistakes to learn why. This is also true. Some times it sticks in your brain better if some one says thats not the best way and you still try and fail and you walk away saying, yea it didn't work for me either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gee-dub Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 3 hours ago, applejackson said: @gee-dub I might have comes off a little crabbier than I meant to. Missy people just want to help, but some use the ruse of wanting to help to show off that they know more than others do. Comes with the territory, I guess. Take care! No worries, I have a gift for being wrong about half the time despite my best intentions :) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Chet Posted August 20, 2018 Popular Post Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 I am wrong about half the time and I am not sure I know what I am talking about the other half. 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted August 21, 2018 Report Share Posted August 21, 2018 7 hours ago, Chet said: I am wrong about half the time and I am not sure I know what I am talking about the other half. x2 just ask my wife Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chashint Posted August 21, 2018 Report Share Posted August 21, 2018 This has been an interesting (and very good) thread and just like it is at my house when I take on a home improvement project, if the owner is happy with it then it's all good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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