New to woodturning and wondering about dust collection

[Joel Christensen]

Hi I am wondering if a shop vac with 1.5 horsepower and a 2 inch hose will be good enough to use for dust collection and I do have a 3m respirator and If a shop vac is not good enough what should I get and I don't have the money or the room for a big dust extractor. I bought a nova comet 2 by the way with extension and G3 chuck.

[Dennis Peacock]

Joel,
When I first started turning, all I had was an old box fan that I used to blow the dust away from me while turning or sanding. Later I moved up to a 2 HP portable DC with the dual bags. That helped but after a bit the DC would move less and less air due to the small holes in the bags getting clogged. Even later down the road I built my own cyclone DC setup and I am happy to say that I have enough air flow near where I'm turning to be satisfied with what it collects. Nothing will get it all but wearing your respirator will provide the most critical air filtration while you are at the lathe.

[Bob Bouis]

A small dust collector or a good shop vac close to the workpiece will catch a lot of sanding dust. As far as shavings go...nothing you can do about that but hang a curtain around the lathe.

[Brian Kent]

I use a box fan with a dust filter tied on. It collects a whole lot of the free-floating dust that I can knock off into a trash can. I will ALWAYS use a 3M half-mask with P-100 filters. They protect my lungs while the house filter captures some of the clouds of dust. When I can figure out space issues, a cyclone system would be peachy keen.

[Steve Arnold]

Unfortunately, a really good shop vac with a 2" hose is no substitute for an OK dust collector with a 4" hose. Pay particular attention to the CFM (cubic feet per minute) of whatever method of dust extraction you choose.

[Ron Rutter]

Joel. A 2" hose is basically useless. The air just tunnels. It is air volume that really pulls away the fines. Look up the Bill Pentz website & do some research is the best advice a I can offer. Ron.

[Joel Christensen]

You guys were very helpful on this and this gave me some comfort here on dust collection and I might actually buy festool dust extractor for the lathe later on but I will definitely be wearing my respirator and have the garage door open. Now the wood shavings is no issue for me as I make a lot of em through the day using hand planes.

[William C Rogers]

Joel, the Festool extractor is a very good vac, however it is more suited to hand power tools such as sanders. If the Festool is just for the lathe I think there are better choices. For the lathe you would be better off with a dust collector that moves more volume. For my midi lathes I have the Big Gulp (from Rockler) that has a 4" port connected to a D.C. This doesn't eliminate the need for a respirator, but is very good at collecting dust when sanding.

[Reed Gray]

A box fan blowing the dust away from you will move more air than a shop vac, even one from Festool. A box fan with a filter on it will pick up a lot of the chunks floating in the air, but I am not sure those filters are fine enough to remove the very fine dust particles that stick in your lungs. If you make a hood to go over your lathe, and put a box fan with a filter on it in the back of the hood, that will remove most of the dust. If there isn't a hood, then lots of dust escapes. I have a couple of clips up on You Tube about my sanding hood and dust collectors. Type in robo hippy

robo hippy

[Roger Chandler]

I would recommend a minimum of a dust colleector....especially with sanding and a good respirator mask. Anything less will allow too much dust in your lungs. Wood dust is toxic, and causes cancer. You only get one pair of lungs, so protect them from the start of your turning adventure!

[Brice Rogers]

I have been following with interest various discussions on dust collection. I basically started with a box fan blowing particles away from me and turned on the "whole house" shop exhaust fan. Then I added an N95 dust mask if I'm sanding. Then I bought a 1 HP Harbor Fright Dustcollector for $15 at a garage sale. That is when I felll into the vortex. The single stage dust collectors work fine for dust but aren't meant for curls of wood. So I made a Thien baffle separator. (BTW, Even a garbage can separator with a couple of 90's will separate out the big chunks and "brillo pads" of shavings). But the Thien baffle works very well and I am venting the really fine stuff outside. Then I bought a 2 HP HF DC at one of their sales. It may not be as powerful as the Griz, but on sale it costs around $180 so there is good value per buck. I am thinking about adding a hanging box fan with a disposable filter. When I looked at the 3M Filtrete filters, I was surprised to see that they filter out particles from 0.3 to 1.0 micron. They seem to do much better than the fiberglass types. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microp...ormance_rating . So, that is my next investment.

A box fan blowing the dust away from you will move more air than a shop vac, even one from Festool. A box fan with a filter on it will pick up a lot of the chunks floating in the air, but I am not sure those filters are fine enough to remove the very fine dust particles that stick in your lungs. If you make a hood to go over your lathe, and put a box fan with a filter on it in the back of the hood, that will remove most of the dust. If there isn't a hood, then lots of dust escapes. I have a couple of clips up on You Tube about my sanding hood and dust collectors. Type in robo hippy

robo hippy

[George Courson]

I'm actually in the process of building a separator and dust filter. I was looking around on the web for 1micron filters but they were way over my budget. I ended up getting a number from a company in Canada that makes commercial dust filters for wood shops and got the number for their supplier for the material they use.
I got a blower from a friend, how much air it moves is an un-known factor. But it has a 6" intake hose on it. It’s a blower for a laser-cutting machine with a large bed.
Anyway, I’ll be using a cardboard barrel that’s 18”W x 18”D inside, to build the separator.
Tophat Filter for 6 inch intake-exaust.png
Today, I was able to get 2 meters of 6” flex hose to use to connect everything and yesterday I had the wood cut to build most of the box for the dust filter.
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I was able to get the parts for the filter box cut at a local shop with one of the giant full sheet table saws. Got the parts all lined up to make sure everything is cut evenly. It needs to be air-tight....
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I’ll be cutting the filter trays on my friends’ laser, so that the filter will be pleated, providing 278” of filtering surface. I’ll be making 4 filter trays between the separator and the blower, so that the air is clean before entering the blower.
I acquired just over 6_sq. yards of the material from the supplier and the trays will have 1 layer at the intake, then 2, 3, and 4 layers of the cloth in the final tray. (As per the instructions by the guy at the place I got the cloth.)
Filter unit.pngFilter Layout.png

I know it won’t suck the chips as I turn, but with the Jet 1221 being reversible, I’ll be able to sand with the dust going in the direction of the hood I’ll be building to sit behind the bed. The 2nd drawing has a square with circles in it that i plan to put in to disperse the airflow evenly into the first filter.

[Brice Rogers]

George, it appears that you are making a Thien baffle also. I'm pleased with mine.

If you have the capability to exhaust outside, you'll end up with less dust in your shop and zero maintenance on a filter. Plus you won't get any pressure drop across a non-existent filter. ;-)

[Bob Bouis]

If you vent outside it'll remove the dust, but you will eventually suffocate after all the air is sucked out of your shop. At 600 CFM that should take about 5 minutes for a typical garage!

If you're concerned about the health aspects of wood dust, I'd encourage you to read up on it from sources outside the wood forum loop. From my own reading, it seems that by far the biggest danger of wood dust is sensitization -- i.e., allergies/asthma -- and congestion. Some studies showed a correlation between occupational exposure to wood dust and fibrosis/lung cancer, but it was always a very modest increase in risk. Much smaller than, say, being male versus being female and thousands of times smaller than smoking.

There seems to be little if any evidence that really fine wood dust is particularly dangerous, that it causes lung cancer or fibrosis, etc., like everyone here seems to think it does. There's a small risk of nasal cancer with some woods, at least there was one observed among people who worked at furniture plants in the '60s. Charred meat is a carcinogen, too. Brass ferules on your tools also. Government regulations cover the total mass of dust suspended in the air rather than the particle size. Based on what I've read, you'd be far better off getting a "marginal" system with a 5 micron filter bag now than you would going without while saving up for one of those super duper 5hp submicron systems with 7" piping. But that's just my take on it.

[George Courson]

Actually, I'll be redirecting the exhaust air to cool the blower motor. I live in Peru and the power here is 60Hz, but the fan is for 50Hz. Also, my workshop is in my living-room. There is no venting to the outside.
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I've got the other panel/shelf up with the other gouges now. it's all going to get moved when I extend the bed on the Jet.
This is the old lathe....
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