Woodworking is a brilliant hobby; it challenges your creativity, precision, and patience (lots of patience). Few hobbies provide the level of satisfaction as woodworking, and it offers a realistic way to earn extra income. There are very few downsides, except perhaps the dust, the ever-increasing costs of materials, and the growing collection of hoarded tools.
Dust is harmful to your health, and it creates a fire hazard. Collecting waste material from a wood lathe is particularly difficult. The dust is produced over the entire length of the lathe, and finding a suitably sized collector scoop and strong enough suction to collect all the waste is very difficult.
Is there a guaranteed, simple-to-use method of collecting both the fine dust produced by a wood lathe as well as the tiny pieces and wood chips that fly off the project you are working on? No method collects 100% of the material, and there will always be some sweeping up to do at the end of the day.
How To Deal With Lathe Dust
The single biggest problem of running your woodworking shop is the massive dust produced by all your equipment.
With most of the woodworking equipment, it is simple to attach an industrial vacuum to the waste port of the tool. The hardest part is finding a universal fitting that works across all your devices. Why can’t manufacturers create a standard size for all extractor outlet ports? It’s not as if we only stick to one manufacturer with a common-size dust extractor outlet! Rant over, let’s continue!
Why Do You Need To Extract Lathe Dust And Other Waste?
Before investigating how to collect and extract lathe dust in your shop, let’s look at why you would want to, and with this in mind, arrive at a cost-effective solution.
There are a few reasons you should keep your woodworking shop as dust-free as possible. Dust is a higher risk to your health and safety in the woodshop than the large chips which a lathe also produces.
Dust Is Bad For Your Health
The dust produced as a consequence of using electrical machinery to work on wood can have severe consequences for your health.
If dust enters your lungs, it could cause various respiratory issues. Breathing airborne dust particles into your lungs may cause allergic respiratory symptoms, mucosal, and non-allergic respiratory symptoms, and as it is considered carcinogenic, dust can even be the trigger causing cancer. Repeated exposure to dust on the operator’s skin can cause severe dermatitis.
If you have Chronic Pulmonary Disease (CPD) or asthma, the issues are exacerbated.
Without any other medical consequence, getting dust into your eyes can cause severe irritation and damage.
Dust Is A Fire Hazard
Dust produced by woodworking machinery is both a fire and explosion hazard.
Several wood explosions fires occur every year. The potential for extensive damage, injury, and even loss of life is very high.
If ignition occurs in a wood dust cloud and this, in turn, causes ignition of the wood in the cloud, the fire which propagates through the whole cloud will very speedily cause an explosion.
Not all wood dust types are explosive, and the potential for a fire to propagate will depend on the wood being worked on.
If the wood doesn’t explode, there is still a high likelihood of a fire occurring.
It Is Difficult To Extract Lathe Dust
The wood lathe is measured between both ends of the center of the chuck. Lathe sizes mainly fall within three categories namely.
Mini Lathes
– ten inches (25 cm) between the ends of the chuck.Midi Lathes
- – twenty to thirty inches ( 50 cm’s – 76cm’s) between the ends of the chuck.
- Full-sized Lathes – forty inches (101 cm) between the ends of the chuck.
This highlights the difficulties of extracting fine dust and other particles from a lathe. Not only do you need to install an extractor hood that is equivalent to the length of the blade, but it must be able to collect waste as you work from different angles on the piece you are turning.
Ideally, you would install the hood around the whole cutting area, but this is impractical as the work area can’t be restricted and must remain accessible for the turner to work on the masterpiece.
Added to the logistical issues associated with the placement of the extractor hood, the suction needed to collect all the particles from a lather must be more potent than it needs to be with all the other machinery. Other equipment feeds the debris through the waste pipe and into the vacuum.
What Are The Options To Extract Wood Lathe Dust?
There are a few options available to you, the effectiveness and cost of which may not always be achievable.
The Trusty Old Broom
I’m sure you did not read this article hoping to find that a traditional broom can be the answer to the problem of dealing with lathe dust.
The reality is that the challenges of extracting dust from a lathe can be expensive and not 100% effective. Sweeping up the lathe dust is not hard and is faster than vacuuming the dust intermittently through a project.
Manually Vacuuming The Lathe Dust And Shavings
Once again, this is not a hi-tech solution but is nevertheless effective and low cost.
The only decision you will need to make is what to do with the shavings and lathe dust once you have sucked it up.
If you use a broom, you will need personal protective clothing to prevent dust from entering your lungs (mask or powered respirator). These do the work, but they are inconvenient and hot to use. However, where needs must, they do an adequate job of protecting your health.
Using A Collection Hood With A Powerful Suction
Installing a collection hood is a viable way of collecting lathe dust and particles. It needs to be supported by a potent suction device (cyclone fan) which can provide suction over the length of the lathe, which could be up to 40 inches (101 cm) wide.
Successfully sucking the air over such a vast area will result in other light objects rising through the air and into the hood. To prevent losing pens, papers with dimensions scribbled on, and sandpaper, the hood should have a grid at the opening, preventing objects that are too large from entering.
A strong cyclone fan will remove most of the dust, which is the main aim of the exercise.
Cyclones with a 2- 5 HP motor are sufficiently strong to complete the task.
Conclusion
You must have a method worked out to keep your woodshop clean of lathe dust and shavings. Whether you opt for low-cost, time-honored practices such as a broom or vacuum cleaner or installing a complete function device around your lathe, you must keep the shop as clean as possible.
References
http://www.peterchild.co.uk/info1/dust_hazard.htm
https://www.hazardexonthenet.net/article/28722/The-dangers-of-wood-dust.aspx
https://www.woodmagazine.com/workshop/dust-collection/guide-to-workshop-dust-control