Machining In The Living Room aka A Lathe In A Desk

[somewildmonkey]

I am actually in the process right now partitioning off an area of my living quarters for woodworking and airbrushing. I live in an apartment and there's no other choice.

I have a 5x6 foot area walled off, floor to ceiling. I'm obviously limited to small projects and use only hand tools, except for a drill.

Sawdust, shavings, paint spray and vapors were the reason for walling off this area. I have a small doorway with a threshold that prevents dust and shavings from blowing out along the floor. I use rubber mats which not only protects the hardwood floor, but also keeps dust from moving around too much.

There is a window that opens to the outside, which I feed the exit hose from a small airbrushing spary booth through. I am planning to put a fan in this window to run at low speed out the window, creating negative pressure, drawing air in from the rest of my apartment - hopefully :-)

I'm considering putting a small air filter in this area as well.

When I need to make cuts on larger pieces of lumber, weather permitting I bring it outside to the parking lot.

Some day I'll have a real shop :-)

[HDRDTD]

Before I inherited my fathers house a few years ago when he passed on, I lived in a 1-bedroom apartment for almost 15 years.

During thos e days, I started to get interested in woodworking again with the initial project being a large corner desk for my PC and all it's goodies.

During the construction of that desk, I had to buy all the various tools i'd be needing, including the usual Biscuit joiner, routers, sanders, dovetail jig, etc including a table saw. I ended up buying a Dewalt DW744 contracter model so I could put it in teh bedroom closet in between projects and haul it out to the dining room when I needed to use it.

It worked out quite well.

I ended up building the original corner desk, another desk to sit beside it, another even larger main desk, as well as a roll around tool chest for all my hand tools.

Everything was made out of Oak, and the finish was brushed on. No spray painting.

Never got a single complaint from any of the neighbors about the noise. I just used common sense to use the more noisey tools during the daytime or early evening and not for prolonged amounts of time.

Sawdust? not a real problem, used a shop vac after every use as well as just happening to have light brown carpeting....

[Prometheus]

Here's your Lesson 3 for you, free of charge--

Last year I decided I could no longer abide the sight of my avacado-colored refrigerator, and as it still runs pretty well and I'd rather buy tools, I decided to just paint the thing with some enamel appliance paint.

Of course, rather than doing the sane thing and taking it outside on the hand truck, I decided I could probably spray that sucker right where it was. So I proceded to mask the area carefully, making a tent of plastic all around it and prepping the fridge for paint, and started in. The mess was fine- there was surprisingly little cleanup, but I didn't account for any ventilation in my superb master plan, and ended up with a head that swam for days. About halfway through the job (in a rather addled state), I wised up a little and made a cardboard vent shaft to the window and put a fan in it- and there is now a perfectly round white spot on the screen I see every time I look out the window.

Less of a disaster than it could have been, but still a PITA. It was one of those jobs where I kicked myself the whole time, and wished I could just quit- but I couldn't. That's the real danger I've run into- when you start something in a living area, and get tired or hit a snag, you have to keep at it even past the point of sanity, just so that you can use the space again.

On the bright side, the fridge looked (and continues to look) brand-new.

[Prometheus]

I got one of those shop-vac air cleaners for my birthday this year, and recommend it highly- it's perfect for a small area. I keep mine in my turnery (about 10' x 10') and it'll clear the air of heavy dust as quickly as I can make it. Works pretty well for drywall sanding and concrete dust as well. Definately worth $100, and very portable. They make better filters, to be sure, but it's a godsend if you want to move it around or are limited in your mounting options.

[Clifford Heath]

Beware - heavy dust is *not* the main problem. The super-fine stuff you can smell but not see is *deadly*, long-term, and it gets through all but the very best filters. And even those, a bit.

I use the house vac system since it's mounted in my workshop, and after using the thickness sander in there even for five minutes, the air becomes positively hazardous even though it *looks clear*.

Since I live in a temperate climate and use no heating or humidifier, I fitted an external vent for the vac's exhaust - such a relief!

[Prometheus]

Point noted and taken- my suggestion was more oriented towards the cleanliness aspect of working in a living space. I don't suggest the shop vac thing will help with health issues, it just keeps the place from looking like you haven't dusted anything in 20 years. The reason I pointed out the concrete and drywall dust is that I have it mainly for remodeling jobs where it's not acceptable to leave a layer of dust over everything in the client's house, and a window is not immediately availible. If you're woodworking in your own home, that'd make yourself or your family the client, and it does a nice job in that regard. YMMV.

Sounds like it works, but perhaps a respirator is in order if you're having that many problems with the fine dust. It still has to go by you to get sucked outside, after all.

[Clifford Heath]

No, the hose runs from the machine to my workshop air inlets, to the vac, then outside. Very little dust makes its way into the air inside the shop. A little dust builds up in piles on surfaces, but only what gets directly deposited there - it doesn't settle from the air.