S-OT: Cathartic Dusting

[mttt]

...warm days are here in Denver, 50's or 60's. Had the garage doors open to do a little sweeping, when I decided to take the Tim Allen approach and exchange the broom for the leaf blower.

After blowing the dirt and grime out, I decided to point the blower over at the workshop side of the garage! I learned a couple of things:

- fine saw dust can stay suspended for a long time

- fine saw dust does not respond well to any attempt to direct it's travel via a leaf blower

- about 5% of the pegs on a pegboard aren't really stuck-on all that well

All in all, that side of the garage seems cleaner. But I wonder if it's more of a zero-sum game, in that all I did was spread it around?

[Bridger]

if you're going to dust out your shop that way you gotta have some positive airflow going on. the air has to be coming in one opening and leaving via another. do you have another door or window on the wall opposite the garage door? fill it up with box fans. you'll need enough flow to change the air in the room in just a few minutes.

[Bob Schmall]

Don't blow it, dude. Suck it. Use a vacuum.

[Doug Winterburn]

I use the blower gun on the compressor. Pretty much same results except with greater control, I don't have to go looking for quite as many small items on the floor and on the driveway. The compressor is mucho better for blowing the sawdust off clothes before going in the house.

-Doug

[Swingman]

My shop is not air-conditoned, so these 45 - 60 degree days are pure pleasure for me, if not for the glue. It also means I have one big *ss, industial size, roll-around fan that stays on during the summer when I am resident. Whenever I leafblower the shop, I put that fan; pointing outside, in the middle of the overhead door opening and turn it on Hurricane ... NO airborn dust stays in the shop long.

[Jay Pique]

I've got an old Toro electric blower that also sucks. You put a bag on the side and you can (sort of) suck up leaves and stuff. What it

*does* do well is suck up sawdust. The bag isn't great (I have no idea how many microns), but I toss on the Dustfoe and go to town. You'll probably want to wrap some wire mesh around the end to avoid sucking up larger chunks.

JP

[Clarke Echols]

Get a cyclone dust collector (from me, of course -- I make & sell 'em :-) ) and hook the blower outlet to a duct going outside. I can clear the air in my 26 x 30 garage in under 4 minutes. Works nicely too when I fill the air with welding smoke and need to freshen the atmosphere (takes less than

2 minutes), especially when the doors are closed and I need to clear it out without losing all the heat. I'm 50 miles north of Denver in Loveland.

CE

mttt wrote: