Dremel type work question

[SteveB]

I am beginning to do some work with a Dremel type tool. Specifically, I am doing some wood carving on pieces of raw wood, mainly juniper, aspen, and some pine.

I saw a man who does this, and is very good at it. He had a square air conditioner filter set up with a squirrel cage that sucked the flying sawdust particles towards the filter.

I am concerned with the long term exposure to this dust. Soooo, I am investigating the proper way to do this so I don't end up with wood lung or some such thing.

To set up a cubical enclosure with the front panel out, and the suction on the rear would limit my accessibility to the work piece. Setting up a filter with a squirrelcage suction is no problem, but I don't think it would catch all the debris. Putting an additional fan to blow the debris away from me would mean that I would have a wind blowing on me constantly. Perhaps a grid with a fan underneath it, and a suction hood over it? Maybe a suction hose near the cutting bit, and all or some of the above?

Am I overthinking this? Maybe just a good filter to go over my mouth and nose, but then, those become uncomfortable after a few hours.

Suggestions and experiences appreciated.

Steve.

[Frank Ketchum]

You could use a down draft table for this. For example, grizzly offers these:

suck the air down around the workpiece and filter it. Many folks build thier own using a squirrel cage motor and filters as you mention. They are mostly used for sanding operations but would probably suit your need.

Also, you can use an air cleaner to constantly clean ambient air in a shop to filter particles that escape your primary defense. Again, these are commercially available or you can build your own.

[John Emmons]

A simple 20" box fan with a furnace filter attached to one side will help too. Set it up so that it's pulling air from your project, filter catches the dust, etc. I use one pretty often for sanding as well as some spray painting. You can pick up a used fan at a thrift shop for a couple of bucks, filters are about a buck.

John Emmons

build

[Clint]

If you 're doing carving, are you getting chips, or dust? The reason I'm asking is because I'd think the chips aren't much of a hazard to your health, it's the fine dust that you're really concerned with. And it wouldn't take much of a breeze (either across the table, or down-draft) to collect the dust.

[SteveB]

I'm concerned about the dust from high speed die grinders. I can wear eye protection for the chips, but some of the dust is very fine.

Steve

[Warren Weber]

Dust mask? WW

[nospambob]

[mac davis]

A good (not cheap paper) dust mask is the 1st defense... we all hate to wear 'em, but it's a good idea to...

2nd line of defense is the box fan idea, I tried it and it really wasn't as effective as I'd like... maybe because it wasn't a classic "box" but had a cage around it... I boxed it in to make all the air pass through the filters and put a cheap $1 filter on the back and a good pleated filter ($5?) on the front.. works well if it's close to the work, pointed towards an open area and you clean or change the filters regularly...

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Lloyd Skeoch]

If you do a google search on dust +carving, you come up with a slew of links. This one

goes into quite a bit of detail, there are also a number of them that talk about various homebuilt solutions. Guess it kinda depends on what lengths you want to go to. When I am power carving, I use a downdraft table with an old furnace squirrel cage fan and two furnance filters in front. Works for me.