Given that I am away from home for a number of weeks, it is difficult to keep up with writing everyday. Things have been super busy lately, getting ready to go and buttoning everything up. Hopefully, these next couple of days do not come off as week or phoning it in. But I won’t deny that I am pushing to keep up with my schedule.
One of the requirements to earn the Eagle Scout rank is to perform what is called an Eagle Project. This is a service project that the scout plans, leads and executes. Maybe I will talk about mine another day but today I am going to talk about another peer of mine’s project.
If you remember this post from last year then you will know how this story begins.
My friend’s project was to vacuum out the attic of this church as well as paint. In the course of the project, we burned out six different vacuums. I didn’t get the chance to go up there, but I heard that the dust was inches thick.
My point with this is vacuums don’t run well when the matter vacuumed coats the filter. It is the airflow through the device that provides the suction. I use my shop vacuum for a dust collector. It does a much better job than nothing but it also leaves a lot to be desired.
Over the years, dust collection has become a much larger topic in woodworking. Like all things safety bike helmets or seat belts as an example, there is no denying that using those things do raise the odds of surviving something catastrophic. On the other side, there are no guarantees. I have heard that there are some that wont even enter the shop without turning on dust collection.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love the space and equipment to have a proper and professional setup. And it is not like I am in there all day, everyday. My dust collection is aimed at reducing the amount of cleanup later and less about a dust phobia but I am not denying that dust is a risk. For better or worse, this is my setup. It always requires a thorough cleaning afterward to get all of the escaped dust.
When I was building my pantry cabinets, I had my old 13″ TV on. At one point, the picture actually went black. I thought maybe it was ruined due to dust building up on the electronic components so I vacuumed it off and it worked again. I do know if it was dust on the inside or the outside of the TV but that seems to have some kind of effect its function. And this is using the vacuum with dust collection, hence it leaves some to be desired.
The filter in the picture is the original filter I bought with the vacuum. When I start to notice a significant reduction of suction, I take it outside and bang all the dust out of the folds. Looking at this filter, I could stand to replace it because it is pretty caked in a lot of the folds. I have spares on hand, so I will probably do it soon.
End Your Programming Routine: I am a strong believer in maintaining things you own. The sweatshirt I am wearing as I write this I bought in college, twenty-five years ago. I have a lot of items that are old as I am getting there too. Even if you ‘buy once, cry once’ it doesn’t mean that you can use things beyond their capability. So if you have a shop vacuum, take a look at the filter. It might need replacing.
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