Dust Collection

You can use (1) a dust collector to collect dust at the source >>>> (2) a respirator to filter dust at the destination (your face) >> (3) an air purifier to catch dust as it travels between the two. Using several at once works best.

(This ranking reflects how well each technique keeps particulates out of your lungs. Swap the second and third when ranking how well they keep dust off work surfaces, off freshly painted / finished / epoxied pieces, and out of the rest of the house. My particulate meters on the second floor could tell when I’d been using power tools on wood in the basement.)

Source dust collection makes a world of difference for sanding. It is quicker because you apply the paper to the wood instead of the dust that builds up on it. Otherwise, you have to stop and clear the piece with a hose or vacuum more often than you actually will. Dust collection also extends the life of the paper by keeping it cool. That’s why this, which looks like an April Fool’s joke, exists.

I bought the JET after I decided dust collection was really important, but before I understood this. The JET was also too loud. I was always looking for ways (switches, remotes, timers) to run it as infrequently as possible, which added a lot of overhead to using it. I’m not sure what it offers over a quieter consumer living-space solution such as the large Coways that I started buying for the pandemic. Maybe it lasts longer, and maybe that matters more in a shop that generates heavy dust for 10–16 hours a day. I didn’t feel that it saved me from needing a dust mask. According to my measurements, it did clear the air after machining much faster than waiting for the dust to settle onto the floor and other surfaces.

If you use the JET (you can borrow mine, but save your back and get help from a friend) or another purifier for whole-room filtration:

• This system works best if there are at least two of them. The idea is to create a current that swirls around the room.
• It should be mounted high up, and near (but not at) a corner. (Ditto.)
• The only air that’s immediately pure is what’s blowing out of the purifier. In which case you can use a smaller purifier such as https://www.oneida-air.com/dust-collectors. And, then you don’t need two.

(I didn’t follow any of these recommendations. I was very slow in learning how to set up dust collection; and then, in trying to figure out how to mount it; and I didn’t get there before we left. Instead, I switched to learning about masks, which paid off in other ways, I guess.)

What I recommend instead is one of:

• Lightweight incremental solution: Get one or two shop vacs with HEPA filters to use as portable dust collectors (you can borrow mine from Greenfield to evaluate them), plus enough ducting to connect anything that makes dust. Connecting the hoses is tedious and may not be fully possible with the router. Some routers support dust collection, but I don’t know whether you can retrofit an older one. You might be able to 3D-print parts for it. Woodworkers often print adapters for CNC machines and for the many incompatible tool ports and shop-vac hose sizes.
• More time, expense, and up-front planning: Instead of the shop vacs, get a stationary (or wheeled) dust collector like this Rockler wall-mount dust collector, perhaps with a canister filter. I don’t know whether the included bag catches the smallest and most dangerous particulates. Richard also has a big old dust collector that he was willing to let me have and that is probably still available. This is a bigger project because you have to plan the ducting, which is why I didn’t get to it before we left. The woodshop here at NYU uses this system. It’s relatively quiet and catches almost all the dust before it gets into the air.

With either shop vacs or a dust collector, you may want to run a cyclone such as https://www.rockler.com/dust-right-dust-separator or https://www.oneida-air.com/dust-deputy in front of it. The cyclone captures large chips before they reach the filters. This extends filter life and reduces how often you must empty the heavy, allergenic dust bins. You empty the cyclone more often, but it is easier to handle and releases fewer fine particles back into the air. A cyclone is critical with a planer or table saw that produces large chips, unnecessary for sanding, and moderately useful for a router, band saw, or miter saw.

Rockler sells adapters for the incompatible duct and hose sizes common in hobbyist woodworking. The adapters work with Rockler dust collectors, other brands, and shop vacs. Oneida also sells widely recommended dust-collection equipment, generally at higher prices.

I invested in dust collection when I started to get sniffly after woodworking, and started to notice lots of stories about “I got sensitized to X wood and now I can’t work with it” for various values of X; and occasionally “I got sensitized to all woods and now I need a powered face mask to continue my hobby”. (Powered face masks seem nice, but I’d like to defer finding them obligatory.) (https://www.wood-database.com tells which woods are particularly allergenic, but there seems to be a fair amount of indivudal variation.) These anecdata made good cases for closing the barn door before the horses had left. (Just like the number of nine-fingered woodworkers who had their injury after ten or twenty or thirty years of woodworking experience convinced me never to use a table saw that wasn’t a sawstop.)