The Art of Woodshop Design

My New Dust Collection Filter Bags Arrived!

Bobby — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:18:04 +0000

Even though it looks like a hot air balloon, the extra surface area has gained me a nice 21% increase in CFM at my planer.

In the previous post, I told you about how I thought my dust collection system was good enough and kept workstations clean, until I noticed a layer of fine dust all over the dust collector and the surrounding area. This made me realize that while the system is picking up fine dust, it’s also spraying it all over the shop.

Fine dust stays suspended in the air and moves around at even low air speeds so for sure it’s making its way back to my nose.

I decided to dig even deeper into my own system, and make it more like systems I’ve designed for larger shops. There is a balance of cost and performance, but if you make the right choices you can get a kick-butt system for relatively low cost, and upgrade in the future as your funds allow.

It’s not often you think about your dust collector filter, but without a good one you aren’t accomplishing what your dust collection system is entirely meant for: dust extraction and containment.

A filter that’s too porous won’t contain the dust, it’ll spray it back out at you. That’s kinda dumb. If you have an undersized filter, you won’t get enough airflow (cubic feet per minute, or CFM) at the tool and it won’t pick up the dust in the first place.

I like the new look; it’s filtering down to 1 micron, and I’ve gained airflow due to the increased filter surface area.

My Old Crap

My old system was basically an “upgraded” felt filter bag, supposedly filtering down to 5 microns, and a lower “breather bag” made of woven polyester which let 30 micron particles through. The filter surface area was also way too low, causing a higher pressure drop than it should. The inside felt surface wasn’t properly treated to hold the proper dust cake, so the material overloaded with fine dust which further increased my pressure drop.

I also found the top filter bag spring clamp device too hard to use (it would often pop open), and the lower collection bag has a ring that fits on the inside diameter of the barrel ring. This sometimes springs back and coats me with dust when I empty it. Totally makes me want to wait until the last minute to unload it.

Now the 1.5 hp Jet DC-1100A itself is pretty good; I get about 567 cfm at my planer even with the restrictive filters, rough flex hose, and undersized ductwork. I’ve had no problems with the impeller, motor, or housing. I’ll probably keep it for now, and upgrade to a 3 hp system later on. I ran out of room on my panel to add another 220V breaker, so I have to upgrade that too.

Goals to Aim For

I decided I wanted my new filter to do certain things, like:

Filter most fine dust particles down to 1 micron
Have low static pressure loss to my system
Increase the CFM to each tool
Easy unloading/ emptying
Easy maintenance/ cleaning

To do this I decided on a singed felt type filter bag rather than a cartridge type filter, from American Fabric Filter Company.

When I removed all the filters, I cleaned the whole machine. Cleans up very nicely; looks new.

Unpacking the New Bag Filter

Weeeeeeeeee! I love when new stuff shows up. Buying things online makes it like Christmas on random days.

Ok. I ordered a top filter bag, a bottom non-breathable (sealed) cotton-duck canvas collector bag, and some band clamps to hold them in place.

I asked for loops at the top of the filter bag so I could make a ring and post out of metal conduit to help maintain the shape of the bag when the dust collector is off. I don’t want it to collapse and break up the dust cake until its fully seasoned. Plus it looks cooler.

The lower bag is a duck canvas material. It’s not breathable on purpose; I want all the filtration to happen at the singed-felt upper bag.

The bottom bag is an airtight duck canvas. The reason I ordered this piece is that I don’t want a 5-6 mil solid poly bag (for looks mostly, and durability too). I don’t want the bottom bag to “breathe” because it would have to be the same singed felt material as the top bag. AFF doesn’t recommend using felt as the collector bag because it’s not meant to support the weight of all those chips and dust, especially when full.

Plus, you don’t want to count on the lower bag as part of your filter media square footage. When the bag gets full, then you’ve just cut your filter area, which will increase the static pressure and lower the CFM you get at the tool. So all of my filtration is designed to be from the top bag.

Highly recommended.

These 1/2” band clamps have a spring-loaded screw that functions as a quick release for convenience. My previous bag attachments (described above) really sucked. On AFF’s website, they say that for critical situations they recommend using 1-1/4” wide by ¼” thick high-density closed cell foam gasket tape, which I might do just to make sure I don’t have any blow-by.

When I unpacked the box, I was impressed with the quality of stitching, the fabric itself (including the singed inside surface), and the packing job. I ordered 2 band clamps, and they gave one extra (very cool I think). The overall turnaround time was pretty quick, and they’ve answered all of my questions thus far so the customer service has been really awesome.

Installing the Filter Bag

I removed the “old bags” first. While I was at it, I wiped down the collector frame and motor housing to start with a clean slate. While that was drying in the sun, I prepared the new filter bag for installation.

To do the lower dust bag first, I threaded the ½” band clamp through the belt loops. Then I noticed that they only sewed on two of them. I was expecting at least 4. With only two, the top of the bag doesn’t hold its shape and folds in on itself, making it hard to unload the dust into a trash can, and re-install. The canvas is quite thick, but having 4 loops will allow the band clamp to keep the bag opening’s circular shape.

These band clamps work really well; there’s a quick release feature where all you have to do is lift the hex screw to disengage. Completely trouble-free and cinches down pretty tight.

So, I went ahead and sewed on my own loops from nylon straps. Yep, I was sewing. I shouldn’t have to do that; 4 should be the standard.

Now with 4 loops, I wrapped the bag around the barrel. Slightly loose, but cinches down well except where I had to fold the fabric to get rid of the slack. I solved any potential leakage problem by taking a piece of self-adhesive foam weatherstrip tape and placed it on the barrel underneath the folds. This way the voids are filled by the compressed foam tape for a good seal.

Band clamp loops on the lower dust bag.

The upper bag fit perfectly, with no slack, and it sealed very well. Here they gave 4 loops, and also they gave 4 hanging loops on the top too. All very nicely done. The top diameter is a whopping 40”, so it spanned two truss bays. I used rubber-coated steel hooks with threaded tips to suspend the filter bag. Later I may make a hanger system out of copper pipe that attaches to the collector barrel so the bag’s not connected to the rafters.

Overall, with the 4 loops on the top bag it keeps its shape nicely, which is good for maintaining a good dust cake. It looks like a hot air balloon.

Because it only came with 2 belt loops, I sewed on two more so the band clamp would help keep the opening’s shape when emptying and re-installing.

With all 4 loops installed, the bag stays open when I remove it for emptying

Due to the extra material on the lower bag, I had to fold it over which caused a gap. The solution was to add self-adhesive foam tape to the barrel so that the gaps are filled where the tape isn’t compressed. When the unit is on, I can’t feel any air leaking out here.

Measuring the New Airflow

As you may know, I bought an anemometer. This way I can actually measure the airflow to see how much is actually being drawn from each machine, and if it’s close enough to the recommended values. I have the ACGIH handbook (1998 edition), where they list the recommended CFM for different tools. The more CFM you have the further out you’ll grab the smaller particles from the collection point.

The ACGIH handbook has a tutorial on the subject of distance from your dust collection inlet and capture of fine dust. To summarize, just put the inlet airflow really close to the actual source, like 6”-12” close. After that distance, the air velocities can’t capture and draw in these tiny but dangerous particles. In an upcoming article, I’ll walk you through what I’ve learned from reading that (yeah, I actually read it).

Part of the reason I replaced my old bag filters with these is because I wanted to decrease my system’s pressure drop. Doing this requires increasing the filter media surface area, plain and simple. If you have lower pressure drop, you have more CFM.

I measured 8,325 feet per minute (fpm) velocity, which translates into 726 CFM in a 4” diameter duct. You want to shoot for around 4,000 to 4,500 fpm to keep dust and chips suspended in the airflow. But, if you’re getting higher numbers, there is probably an opportunity to get more CFM by upsizing the duct branch. Just make sure that by doing that you don’t go below the recommended velocity.

Ok, now to my airflows. Before I took apart my dust collector to take measurements for fitting the new bag, I measured some velocities to get the CFM. For example, I measured 567 CFM at my planer. This was while the small surface area bag was installed, although the lower bag, still a “breather” bag, wasn’t quite full. It’s a woven material at like 30 micron or worse filtration, so the filter side of my system wasn’t overly restrictive to begin with, but not as good as it should be, but it let fine particles out.

There’s a 4” duct branch to my planer coming from a 5” main and 6” duct riser from the collector, and about 5 ft. of 4” flex duct. If I wanted more CFM, I could increase that duct and flex to 5”, the tool connection to 5” (and still keeping at 4000+ fpm velocity, where Velocity = CFM/Duct Area). Or I could get more filter surface area. Or both.

With the new filter, I’m getting 726 CFM at the same measurement point, or 8,325 fpm velocity! I was not expecting that much of an increase. The combination of a fan inlet improvement, plus the huge filter surface area have dropped the losses enough to give me a 21% increase in airflow. The ACGIH recommendation for a 13” planer is 785 CFM, so I’m happy for now. I know if I upsize the branch to 5” I could get more.

The motor and impeller have certain performance characteristics unique to each dust collector, usually described by a fan curve. This is basically a graph that charts CFM vs. Static Pressure. So, if you can calculate either one of those, you can use the chart to find the other.

But because most tools come with a default 4” connection, I ran the branch at 4”, but I increased the main to 5” to relieve the static pressure a bit. If I take the time to increase the tool outlet, I see an opportunity to upsize the branch too.

I also took a measurement at the jointer (8” blades). With the old filter I was getting barely 300 CFM. Now I’m getting 552 CFM which includes 9 ft. of flex hose. If I take off the 9 ft. of flex, I get 680 CFM. As you can see, adding just 9 ft. of 4” flex hose in this CFM range results in an 18% drop for my collector fan and impeller. The ACGIH recommendation for a jointer greater than 6” is 440 CFM. Even so, I plan to increase this branch drop from 4” to probably 5” because I want more CFM since I notice shavings can get caught up too easily in the hood connection.

WoodChip Tip: If you think about it, if you’re using one tool at a time, the duct size should be the same from the tool opening-to the flex- to the branch- to the main to the collector, particularly at major tools like the Table Saw, Jointer, Planer, Drum Sander, etc. Some tools have two connections (like your table saw might have a cabinet duct and an overhead blade guard duct) and they should be connected by a wye fitting, and go from there back to the collector with the proper duct size.

Dust Collector CFM at Jointer with Flex Duct

Keep in mind that the current filter bag is new, with little dust cake on it. But, the singed felt is supposed to hold onto the proper amount of dust cake and let the rest fall off when you tap the outside of the bag. Regular felt will get loaded up ( I saw this when I cleaned the old ones to store away—an amazing fine dust pile was dumped out of what looked like a relatively clean inside surface).

In the future, with the dust cake in place, I don’t expect a huge drop in CFM since the filter bag was oversized on purpose to account for this. I’ll take future readings and keep you posted on what happens.

CFM vs. Static Pressure

Your dust collector should have an associated “Fan Curve”, which tells you what CFM it’ll give you at certain static pressures. For example, if I calculate that I have 4.75” static pressure after adding up all of my ductwork and filters, etc., the curve might tell me I should get 655 CFM. But I calculated that 4.75” static pressure at a CFM I guessed at. So, I take the 655 CFM from the fan curve and re-run my static pressure calcs using 655 CFM.

This will determine what the new static pressure would be at 655 CFM. I keep reiterating until it narrows down to where both numbers are true (meaning that the CFM works for the static pressure calculation, and the fan curve).

If I move my finger along the curve to a lower static pressure, I can find the higher CFM I want and upgrade my ducts, fittings, and/or filter to get that static pressure. So, if you’re starting your design today, do some layouts and calculate the resulting static pressure at the longest duct run, and check your higher CFM-eating tool duct runs as well, so you know what collector to buy.

Your calculation needs to give you the recommended CFM at each tool (assuming you run one at a time) at the static pressure associated with your shop’s duct run to that tool. In another article, I’ll detail how you can do that, and when I finish my spreadsheet, I’ll share that with you too.

If you’re about to buy a dust collector, and a manufacturer refused to give you the fan curve, just don’t buy it. That means they’re embarrassed to show it. I have a Penn State Industries catalog and they publish theirs.

By the way, just as an experiment, I measured the velocity about 6” away from the free end of the duct. The velocity dropped from 6,332 fpm inside the duct down to 539 fpm. The further away you get from the suction opening, the lower the velocity gets. In fact, it’s based on the distance squared. My ACGIH Industrial Ventilation handbook goes through how calculate this to determine how far out you’re collecting the particles. About 100 fpm or so is all you really need to coax fine dust into your dungeon.

Another Opporunity

While I’m messing with the dust collector, I noticed that I have a long-radius 6” diameter elbow connected directly to the fan impeller housing. I know from my engineering time that a “system effect” occurs when you have fittings too close to your fan inlet. The ACGIH manual and SMACNA help you calculate the pressure drop that results from this, and it does make a good bit of difference.

For now, know that your goal should be to have straight duct into your fan at approximately 6 duct diameters in length. This means if you have a 6” main riser, you need 6” x 6 = 36” straight duct at your inlet before you install an elbow. This may not fit your shop, so you might compromise this a bit, but do the best you can. Here, some is quite a bit better than none.

For my shop, I can easily fit some additional straight duct here, so that’s what I’m doing. I angled the dust collector in its corner so I can fit exactly 3 ft. or 36” of straight duct from the inlet to the duct riser. As I say in my workshop layout articles, why does everything have to be parallel to the walls? Position stuff at an angle if it works better that way.

To reduce the system effect, I moved the elbow three feet away so that I have a straight duct going into the fan inlet. I kept 2 ft. of 6” flex hose at the duct riser so I don’t break any duct joint seals when I move the collector to change bags.

Using the spreadsheet I’m making, I entered in 700 CFM to a 6” duct to see what the static pressure would be with:

6” (1.5 R/D) elbow right at the fan inlet
36” of straight 6” duct at fan inlet then the 6” (1.5 R/D) elbow

With the elbow right at the inlet, this condition causes 1.21” static pressure! If I add the 3 ft. of straight duct (6 duct diameters), then it’s only 0.285”. This is quite a difference. That’ll buy you several elbows, or partially make up for other poor design choices just by doing this simple thing. No wonder I’m getting so much more CFM, even more than I predicted.

I added a duct support leg under the elbow; using a duct hanger strap would’ve looked ugly.

What Goals I’ve Achieved with the New Bag Filter

The goals I was aiming for (listed above) were to filter smaller particles, lower static pressure, increase the CFM, streamline the dust emptying process, and reduce the hassle of filter cleaning maintenance.

So how did I do with each?

On the filtration front, I no longer see fine dust build-up on the dust collector frame, even after running some MDF through the table saw. Before I’d see this all the time, and when I noticed it after cutting padauk, I wiped it clean and after a few cuts it was back. Well no more. I know I’m breathing better air.

I purposely chose the 16 oz. singed felt (I could’ve gotten 10 oz. or 12 oz.) to get the fine particles; to me if I’m gonna pay to upgrade these it might as well be a close to the best available as possible.

These 16 oz. singed-felt bags are amongst the best I could choose so they filter really fine particles even with no dust cake. Clean filter performance is critical to check. Know that what you’re buying has been tested and rated as such because it’ll be awhile before the dust cake fully develops.

As for static pressure, I don’t have a manometer, but judging from the CFM increases, it looks like there was a significant impact there. I was able to find some fan curves for the Jet DC-1100 and from that I see that I may have decreased the overall static by about 1.5” to 2”.

I used hooks to support the bag by its integral belt loops. This way it maintains its shape so I don’t disturb the dust cake too much, and it looks way better to than a collapsed heap of felt when it’s off.

The lower bag with the quick-release band clamp not only seals better, it’s MUCH easier to remove, and instead of snapping on the inside of the barrel, it wraps around the outside for easy access. Before a flexible steel ring snapped into the inner barrel, which sometimes would pop back at me and hit my face with dust.

For maintenance, you don’t want to wash, blast with compressed air, or otherwise overly clean your bag filters. You want the dust cake to help filter the finer particles. The AFF singed felt is designed to hold the proper dust cake, and let the rest fall off with a mild tap with a stick or something. So that’s my maintenance program. Beat it with a stick.

What Improvements Are Next

Now that this is done, I’ve been thinking about how to further optimize my system. I know that the capabilities of my current 1.5 hp motor/ impeller are limited, as good as the Jet DC-1100 is. After measuring the actual airflow to each tool with the anemometer, I’m mostly satisfied with the CFM I’m getting vs. the ACGIH book recommendations, but not quite with the “fine dust calculation” also detailed in the ACGIH book.

So, to increase your CFM, you want to do several things.

Increase your motor Hp, say to 3 Hp (requires 220V for practical reasons, and if you want a cyclone definitely get a 3 or even 5 Hp version because of the huge 3”-4” pressure drop of the separator)
Decrease your ductwork’s static pressure via better fittings, reduced run, or increased diameter ductwork
Decrease your filter’s static pressure

For now, I plan on keeping my current dust collector, but I’m putting in a 220V outlet for a future upgrade. I just ran out of slots in my breaker panel, so I’d have to replace it or have a subpanel installed.

I’ve had this thing for years; probably at least 8. It performs very well; it’s not too loud, and it gets good ratings in reviews. All I’ve had to do to modify it was add rubber washers for vibration isolation (see upper left-hand corner of the photo), and replace the filter bags. I think that all dust collector manufacturers should properly design and size their filters. I can’t find even ONE manufacturer who does it right. Why? Because they don’t have to; nobody demands it.

Next up is to add some sort of separator plate or dome similar to Jet’s vortex cone to protect the filter from violent chips, and to keep the felt from getting excessively loaded. As long as this device doesn’t decrease my airflow much (by increasing static pressure in the system), I’m ok with it.

Now that the “discharge” side is taken care of, I want to turn my attention to the “suction” side of things.

This means the duct main, branches to tools, and the tool connections themselves. I’ve developed a static pressure calculator in Excel to really figure out what my system’s doing. That way I can play around with duct sizing, elbow types, various routes, etc. to see what gives me the CFM I want at the proper duct velocities recommended by ACGIH.

I know, there are several duct static pressure calculators out there. Most are pretty good, but I wanted one that uses real fluid dynamics equations that more closely approximate the Moody diagram, and I wanted to incorporate all of the fittings I could find in the SMACNA and ACGIH publications. Some of the other calculators I’ve used have too many approximations in them, and by the time I factor in my own assumptions that we all have to make (especially with filters), there’s too much error in my opinion.

Since I’ve used static pressure calculation spreadsheets on large commercial air handling systems, a few dust collection systems, and even dryer exhaust ducts, I started from scratch and built one that is easy to use. By answering a series of detailed questions with yellow boxes to indicate where you enter data, just go down the items and the spreadsheet does the rest. I’m still in the process of putting in all the different fitting and configuration choices, but it should be done soon.

This is what happens when the velocity is too low—little piles of dust. There is a fire risk to dust build-up, and also if heavier chips are accumulating and were suddenly picked up when a blastgate is closed it could damage your system.

So, back to ductwork.

I still have a few short-radius elbows (1.0 R/D) that I will replace with long-radius elbows (1.5 R/D or 2.0 R/D).

Some branches are 4” which have a really high velocity that creates huge static pressure which ends up lowering the CFM dramatically. If I can increase the diameter while still staying in the “safe” range of 4,000 fpm velocity, I’ll get more air which will in turn capture more dust further away.

Some of my tool connections can be improved as well. Not only can I increase the critical ones from 4” to 5” or 6”, but I want the airflow intake to be as close to the source as possible, and the crossflow of air intake from outside a tool cabinet to be directed strategically. Installing chip/ dust deflection hoods would help to prevent particles from escaping the “capture bubble”. The ACGIH book has some diagrams suggesting hood designs for various tools. I’ll just tackle one at a time when I feel like it.

While modifying the inlet duct, I re-sealed some of the ductwork around the shop. I found some of it had openings in it due to duct joints shifting over time.

Other things I’ll be doing include re-sealing joints and seams( since I noticed some look in need of repair), buy smoother flex duct, and get those bridging hose clamps that are designed to fit nicely over the ridges of flex duct. Standard hose clamps don’t seat well all the way around because of the spiral geometry of the flex duct. My woodshop design is always evolving, and after living with certain things you find out what you’d like to improve.

There’s plenty to keep me busy just with dust collection. So because I have other stuff to make (like actual woodworking…), I’ll pick tasks and take care of them every few days. But it’s also fun since it’s a building project and I get to use it every day.

Dust Collection Mastery

Does your Dust Collector Filter Bag Spray Fine Dust Up Your Nose?

Needles the Shop Cat.

For more guidance in assembling your Workshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

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Gotta get more clamps,

My New Dust Collection Filter Bags Arrived! is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

Does your Dust Collector Filter Bag Spray Fine Dust Up Your Nose?

Bobby — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:56:38 +0000

This setup is more of a dust sprayer than collector.

I thought my dust collector worked pretty well until I was emptying the lower dust bag and noticed something. It makes total sense, but I just didn’t really think about it before.

I’ve always had the ultimate dust collection system as my goal, and have several improvements on my list. Enlarging the dust ports from 4” to 6” on my jointer, making a dust extraction blade guard for my table saw, and increasing the duct drop size to my drum sander are the main ones. But now I’ve started to rethink the “back end” of the system woodworkers don’t normally worry about.

Not Just an Automatic Broom

A dust collection system isn’t just an automated way of sweeping up your workshop. I bought a dust collector originally so that I wouldn’t have to run out of the shop after cutting tons of boards and wait for the dust cloud to clear using a fan and opening the side door. I thought of a dust collector as a tremendous time-saving device, allowing me to use tools without sweeping up or worry about breathing dust.

To further save shop time, I decided on a central system that was ducted to each machine so I wouldn’t have to wheel it over and hook up a flex hose. I knew I’d tend to make cuts without it if I had to do that.

So I bought a Jet dust collector, model DC-1100A. I use two 5” diameter duct mains branching off of a 6” riser from the collector, each covering half the shop so that each main has a shorter run, reducing static pressure (resistance to airflow). I have blastgates at each machine to allow the full capacity of the dust collector to focus on the tool I’m using (one at a time).

The motor and impeller work fine, but the lower bag is able to breathe but doesn’t filter fine dust. This bag was an upgrade (I think 5 microns, but unknown % efficiency), and really isn’t enough surface area. I need something that will filter down to 1 micron at 90-something percent.

What’s Wrong

My ductwork, a subject for another article, could use improvement, but works ok for now. I’m getting somewhat close to the air quantity (measured in cubic feet per minute, or CFM) that OSHA recommends for machines that are close to each 5” main, but it’s not quite there for the machines at the end of each main duct run. Increasing the dust port connection sizes, buying smooth-bore flex duct to replace some rougher duct I have, and upsizing the duct drop/ branch diameters, are all part of the solution. The other is to further reduce the system’s static pressure on the other side of the fan, the filter bags. I could also get a more powerful 220V dust collector, but that’s going to have to wait.

What I noticed while changing the dust bin is that the lower bag had a super-fine coating of dust on it, and all over the white enamel paint of the dust collector’s frame. It was very obvious this time because I was cutting Padauk which has a reddish dust. I then realized my lower bag was passing fine dust and spraying it all over my shop, where the suspended particles were part of what I was breathing.

The upper bag filter was an upgrade. It’s a thick felt bag designed (theoretically) to filter down to 5 microns. The lower bag functions as a breather bag just like the top bag, so it too should filter down to 5 microns. But it doesn’t. It’s a woven polyester, and filters down to maybe 30 microns. I keep reading articles saying 10 microns and less are more dangerous because our body has a hard time getting rid of them, and doesn’t do a good job of filtering them. So, cumulative damage occurs.

Because the lower bag functions as a filter, the air each tool is getting changes as the bag fills with chips and dust because the filter surface area gets reduced. So my already minimal CFM becomes way below the air needed to pull in the smaller particles at that point.

One more thing that’s wrong with my setup is that the overall filter surface area could be increased quite a bit with a custom bag, reducing the static pressure on that side of the fan. Having a small restrictive filter is a waste because it’s so easily fixed. Until I upgrade my motor and impeller, or buy a good cyclone, I want to maximize the air I’m pulling from my machines, particularly the ones furthest away.

So, two problems (at least):

Too much filter static pressure thus reducing the CFM I need, and
Small particles are getting pumped into my shop air

Eeeeewwww…this should not be dusty like this.

Designing Dust Extraction with More Than Filtration in Mind

While this article focuses on filtration, keep in mind that if chips, shavings, large dust particles, and small dust particles don’t make it to your dust collector it won’t matter how good your filters are.

So that means capturing the dust at the source (as you’ve read many times before). Blades and bits fling the particles at high speed, so you want to make sure your machines incorporate some sort of shield or hood to deflect and contain these so they can be drawn into the airstream. For my table saw, SawStop makes an overarm guard designed with dust collection in mind.

Also, make sure you’re getting the recommended air quantity (CFM) to each woodworking tool. Right now I’m doing some research (including the help of my friend at Cal-OSHA and other recognized standards) to get a better understanding of what my target CFM values should really be. Finally, your ducts (and dust ports) have to be sized to handle the recommended CFM at a low static pressure while maintaining enough velocity (air speed) to carry the chips and dust or you’ll get clogs and increase fire risk.

That means that you can’t make your ducts too small OR too big. Too small and there will be too much resistance to airflow (static pressure) and your fan will deliver a lower CFM than you want. Too big and the velocity gets too low (should be 4000-4500 feet per minute, minimum from the California Mechanical Code is 3500 fpm) and sawdust will settle in your ducts (both horizontal runs and vertical risers). As a mechanical engineer, I’ve done a lot of static pressure and ductwork calculations so I’ll make an article or two about exactly how to do that. There are a number of online resources as well.

In my Murphy-Rodgers Technical Handbook, for example, they list velocities needed to effectively carry certain particles such as aluminum dust, corn, flour, sand, etc. They list wood blocks as needing 5,800 fpm, wood fibers as needing 5,500 fpm, wood chips at 4,800 fpm, and wood dust at 4,400 fpm.

Commercial shop dust collector manufacturers are a better source of information than hobbyist brands because they have to comply with real regulations regarding workplace standards. Hobbyist dust collectors tend to cut corners that the customer base doesn’t demand so the prices are lower and more people buy them.

Filter Types and Dust Collector Types

Depending on the type of dust collection system you choose, you may have bag filters or cartridge filters. Bag filters can be woven polyester, regular felt, or treated felt. Cartridge filters are usually cylindrical in shape and have pleats (corrugated pyramid shaped folds) to maximize filter surface area in a compact form.

If you want a single stage dust collector, for example, some come with a cartridge filter and others with a bag filter. Same with two-stage and cyclone types–you can choose. Mine is a single-stage, meaning that chips aren’t going through a “particle separation” stage; all just goes through the impeller directly into the bags. This system is harder on the filters and impellers, but is much less expensive. If you design it right, make a few modifications as described below, it works ok, but it may not pass a clean-room lab test.

On single-stage models, the top bag is usually the “breather bag”, while the bottom bag just collects the fallen dust and chips. Sometimes the bottom bag is designed to also breathe (meaning it’s not sealed), but often it’s a less effective plain woven bag filter.

Filter-felt would be a better choice, but it’s not meant to support heavy loads of sawdust so you typically see woven polyester. You’re better off sealing this up by using either a 5-6 mil solid poly bag, a drum, or a #8 duck canvas bag that doesn’t allow air to pass through. If you do this, you need to make sure the top bag has enough surface area to handle the airflow. More on that below.

Chips and shavings are not what you should worry about; it’s the really tiny dust you can’t see that damages your respiratory system, and most dust collectors don’t filter these very well. Kind of ashame when you think about it, since they know that small shops typically recirculate the air.

Exhausting Outside vs. Inside

A question I often see (and get) is whether to exhaust your dust collector outside or recirculate it inside your shop. The pro’s and con’s are as follows:

Recirculate

The good:

You won’t loose heated or cooled air since you’re keeping it within your shop envelope
Reduced noise to the outside
No worries about regulations regarding what you’re discharging

The bad:

You have to really make sure the air is well-filtered before sending it back into your shop
Small particle filtration takes a good filter with a lot of surface area to avoid losing airflow due to clogging
Cleaning the filters can stir up dust

Exhaust outside

The good:

You don’t need to worry about filtration as much; if you just filter out say down to 10-20 micron or even a little bigger so you won’t blow sawdust at your neighbor.
Filter cleaning will be more of a pressure-drop issue than a filter damage issue

The bad:

You will want to check your local regulations on discharging air (what level of filtration is needed)
Noise will be an issue, so you want to use a “soundtrap” or duct muffler on the discharge. This is just a double tube, perforated on the inside with sound-absorbing insulation sandwiched between. These can be expensive, but you can make your own. The best way is to know how many dB of each octave band your collector produces and get a custom soundtrap fabricated to attenuate the problem frequencies
You will be taking out a lot of CFM from your shop, and the exact same amount of air will be sucked in from the outdoors. You need a good source of make-up air, sized at least 500 fpm using the free area of the opening (louvers have roughly 50% free area, but look up the exact value from the manufacturer).
Air you’re drawing in through louvers or an open door can just as easily contain dust and dirt, unless you filter that too. I mean, tap the top of your attic insulation and you’ll see a puff of dust. That’s from outside air being drawn into your attic.
It is dangerous to do this if you have any gas-fired, open-combustion furnace, dryer, water heater, or other appliance in your shop, basement, or garage
If it’s really cold or hot outside any air conditioning you’re doing to cool or heat your shop will be ineffective because you’re tossing that air right outside again, and drawing in whatever’s outside at a fast rate. For example, if your dust collector’s pulling 800 CFM, and you have a 20×20 shop with 9 ft. ceilings, you’re changing all the air in there every 4-1/2 minutes! You would either need to incorporate energy recovery systems to the in/ out airstreams, condition or at least temper the incoming air, or switch to radiant heat which can better keep up with the air changes. These options are, of course, expensive. I do have electric radiant heat and it can tolerate an open door because it heats up objects around it and that helps keep me warm enough (but I’m in CA hehe). But I’d probably have to add wattage if I didn’t recirculate the duct collection air.

My drum sander produces lots of fine dust. To get better airflow these two 4” ducts will be connected to a larger diameter duct where the static pressure will be lower but not too large that I don’t get the proper velocity. Right now it’s not getting enough CFM so some fine dust is able to escape.

Protecting Your Filters From Excessive Dust Loading

Some people go through all sorts of trouble to get all the chips and dust separated out of the airstream before it hits the impeller or the filters, typically using either a separator bin or a cyclone section. This is fine, but causes a significant pressure drop in your overall system (could be 4” or so). You need to accommodate this by increasing your motor size and making sure the impeller and motor can deliver the CFM you want at the overall static pressure for your exact system. The benefit is that your impellers don’t get beat up, and your filters won’t load up as quickly or get damaged by increased pressure due to filter clogging.

My “ultimate” dust extraction design would incorporate cyclone separation, and probably a generously sized two-stage filter system, and have the capability to switch from “recirculate mode” to “outside discharge mode”.

Some newer Jet dust collector models incorporate a “vortex cone” separator into their single-stage systems. Basically it’s an inverted, shaped sheet steel cone that acts like a shield or poor man’s cyclone device and enhances particle separation. The goal is to prolong filter life by slowing particle loading. It’s not a true cyclone, but it’s better than not having it for sure.

So if you have a single-stage system perhaps you could retrofit yours (I’m gonna…), or if you’re replacing one or in the market for a single-stage, take a look at that. You’ll really want one if you’re using a cartridge-type filter on a single-stage unit. Big wood chips will screw up those filters fast.

What You Need to Know About Pressure Losses

If you have a basic understanding of what your dust collector is doing, and what factors affect performance, you can make better decisions about its design. Refer to the article Dust Collection Mastery to get a solid overview on dust extraction design and options.

You have a lot of control over your design, and if you know the CFM target you’re going for with each tool, the required velocities, dust collection fitting options, and how to calculate pressure drop, then you can optimize your system. I’m in the process of putting an article together how I will size my dust collection system, drawing on my engineering experience doing HVAC and dust collection systems for larger shops, as well as some researched I’ve collected. It’s about time to incorporate what I know into my own workshop and plan for a significant upgrade.

Here we’re taking a close look at what you can do on the discharge side of your dust collector fan. Most woodworkers don’t think about reducing the system’s static pressure caused by the filter, but you absolutely can, and filter down to very fine particles.

To reduce static pressure, use elbows with a curvature of at least 1.5 times the diameter. I could go a step further here and use a smoother one-piece elbow instead of a gored or segmented elbow.

An Important Note About Filter Certification

Whenever you’re buying a filter, whether a bag type or a pleated cartridge, you want to make sure it’s tested and certified, and rated while CLEAN.

Using filter bags, whether on a single-stage or on industrial-sized baghouse dust collectors, you’re using a dust cake layer to decrease the permeability of the filter and help stop small particles from getting through, but allow clean air molecules to pass.

A dust cake is a layer of dust on the inside of the bag fibers that lodges amongst the fibers that doesn’t shake loose after minor cleaning/ tapping of the bag. It’s on purpose, and many felt bags are surface-treated to hold just the right amount to form an effective barrier. This takes awhile to develop (it starts in a few hours but can take some time), so understand that it won’t be as efficient at stopping small particles at first, unless you get a really good one, like from American Fabric Filter Company. You’ve got to check the “clean” filter rating to see if it meets your goal.

WoodChip Tip: Don’t count on the dust cake necessarily, though you should size the filter to account for it to prevent loss of airflow, filter damage and particles being forced through under high pressures.

If you’re looking to further guarantee small particles don’t make it back into your shop, perhaps you can enclose your collector and have one wall be a bank of extremely generously sized fine filters. If you do this, test your airflow with and without that and make sure your overall system still works ok; don’t sacrifice needed CFM. The concept is similar to having a pre-filter and final filter like in many commercial air conditioning units and workshop air cleaners. Looking at my old dust collector design notes, I have a sketch for an enclosure with sound baffles and filters to help quiet the system. Not sure if I’ll do that but I’ll see how the new filter bags perform and think about it.

When it applies to pleated filters like cartridge types, ASHRAE Standard 52.2 is what you should refer to; filters that have a Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value, or MERV number. These numbers, such as “MERV 16” indicate the percentage of different size particles that are stopped, from 0.3 to 10 micron. The larger the number, the better the filter will be at stopping a greater % of smaller particles.

In order to get rated, the filters are tested according to a strict standard that includes multiple tests at various velocities. The ratings are also listed with the velocity at which they were certified. So know what your CFM is, and divide by the filter media area to get the velocity through your filter.

For felt bag filters, a BIA Classification is sometimes used; BIA stands for Berufsgenossenschaftliches Institut für Arbeitssicherheit (I’m not kidding…). These tests (described in the ZH1/487 Standard for indoor recirculation) are carried out on clean filter media at an 11 fpm velocity. A concentration of 200 mg per cubic meter of quartz dust in air is used for the test, and 90% of the particles are 0.2 to 2 micron. They average 6 tests.

They measure air quality in mg per cubic meter of dust particles, and give the filter a classification based on the resulting concentration after 6 tests. Each certification has a maximum allowable concentration of particulates that would be present in the workplace or shop air. Ask your manufacturer for the test data, and which certification they used and make sure it was tested in clean condition. I’d look at trying to get 0.5 to 1 micron efficiencies around 98%+ if you can.

Using this anemometer I can measure the velocity in my dust extraction ductwork and by multiplying it by the area (in sq. ft.) I get the CFM.

My new cool toy: Anemometer (used to measure airflow; take a velocity measurement and multiply it by the duct area in sq. ft. to get the CFM.)

Filter Bags

Ok, back to my dust collector. My plan is to get a company, probably American Fabric Filter Co., to provide an appropriately sized upper filter bag to replace my current one. It’ll be much larger to account for the fact that my lower dust catcher won’t be a “breather bag” but a sealed container, which I’ll also get from AFF. I took their business card years ago at an AWFS show, and it’s still on my desk with the little sample of 16 oz PE felt and singed Shaker felt stapled to it. I talked to the guy at the booth for quite awhile, but never got around to ordering the bag.

Now I’m quite motivated after seeing all that dust powder and digging deeper into what performance a recirculating dust collection system could (and should) provide. Dust extraction systems I’ve designed and specified for commercial shops had their filter discharge to the outdoors, so filtration was just a matter of outside air quality regulations. But inside you really want to make it as clean as you can because you’re directly breathing that.

From reading AFF’s website, I think the most economical solution for me at this point is to get a singed-surface, non-woven polyester felt bag to retrofit my existing collector. This bag will filter 1 micron at near-perfect efficiency after a DUST CAKE has established itself, but make sure you ask about the filter efficiency while CLEAN at 1 micron, meaning what % of that size particle it captures; you’re looking for 98% at least. So if their filter captures 76% of 2 micron particles and 99% of 5 micron particles, then to me you’re really getting a 5 micron filter.

American Fabric Filter Co. sent me some info I requested regarding their felt filter bags. I was glad to see that they do have an official 3rd Party particle arrestance efficiency rating. They gave me a BIA Classification chart that shows test condition results for their 12 oz. singed polyester felt filter bag before the dust cake has built up (clean). This clean media has an air permeability of 35-45 CFM at 0.5” static pressure. From 0 to 10 microns, I see on the graph that it ranges between 96% and 98%. I see that at exactly 1 micron on the graph, it’s right at 96-97%. Above 10 microns it is rated at 99.9% to 100% efficient.

Pretty darn good while still clean. This particular filter was given a “G” BIA classification, indicating that 99.5% efficiency was achieved for dust separation with dust of concentration greater than 0.1 mg per cubic meter. For comparison, a “C” rating would mean achieving 99.9%. And it’ll only get better as the dust cake builds, assuming you size the filter bag to prevent excessive pressures. I’ll see what they have available for finer filtration and compare the required surface areas.

They point out that there are a few variables that will change a bag filter’s performance. These include the type of dust you’re actually collecting (slippery, sticky, agglomerating, etc.), felt surface treatment (plain, singed, glazed, PTFE membrane coated, or bath treated with release agents), correct bag sizing to avoid over-pressurization forcing particles out, and poor maintenance (over cleaning/ washing).

hehehe...

The beauty of felt filter bags is that they require very little maintenance. Every so often they recommend you tap the bag to knock excessive dust off the inside surfaces. A singed felt will retain a controlled dust cake for you. If you size the bag to handle the CFM you want with a dust cake layer, you’ll be fine.

Large baghouse-type dust collectors have auto-shakers or compressed air cleaning systems to automate this process. The singed felt holds onto a certain amount of dust to serve as the dust cake layer, and any excess tends to fall off or come off with a bit of shaking or tapping. This means that your pressure drop won’t get out of control generally.

My recommendation is you check it (measure your static pressure using a manometer) every so often, and tap your filter bags now and again. I bought an anemometer and I use it to test the velocity I’m getting out of each duct, and multiply that by the area to get the CFM. You can compute the pressure difference you’re getting using your fan curve, but this is tricky and not too accurate. You can buy a manometer to see what the pressure drop is with a clean vs. dirty filter so you know when it’s time to tap off the excessive dust cake. Ask the manufacturer for their guidelines.

So how large should the filter bag be? AFF has indicated that ideal systems will have between 5 and 10 CFM per square foot of fabric. Ultimately, I’ll tell the manufacturer what my needs are (desired max dirty filter pressure drop, level of fine dust filtration, etc.) and let them recommend the material, and calculate the area needed to keep the pressure drop low given my CFM. The idea is to optimize what I’ve got, and later I can upgrade if I think I need more air for certain tools.

It seems the goal is to have 50-100% excess air capacity while clean, with a target static pressure loss of 0.5”. Many manufacturers of dust collectors undersize the bags, which means that when a dust cake develops you lose more airflow than is appropriate for your tools.

Sometimes I aim the fan outside and crack open the garage door a little bit to help exchange the air in the shop.

Cartridge Filters

A cartridge filter is another option to save space, but I think the maintenance would be a hassle for me since I have no particle separation. Even cyclones don’t have perfect small-particle separation so their filters often get loaded and experience high pressure drops, but if you get enough filter surface area, and do a few other things, a good cartridge filter can get really fine particles.

Cartridge filters have pleated (folded) filter media wrapped in a cylinder shape, usually. The pleated (accordion) design increases the filter surface area in a compact geometry to save space. These filter materials can be damaged by high dust collector outlet pressures resulting from excessively loaded (dust laden) filter media, which can force larger particles through. They can also be damaged by trying to clean them with high pressure compressed air. A damaged filter (bigger holes in the media) will mean you’re blasting dust right back into your shop.

There are some choices for filter media material, such as plain old cellulose, cellulose-polyester mix, and then there’s spun-bonded polyester. On the MPF Engineered Filters website, using polyester increases the filter’s abrasion resistance, and the spun-bonded polyester has the added benefit of promoting good dust cake release to keep the pressure drop in check. To me this means the cheaper cellulose material is less tolerant of cleaning and you’ll wind up replacing it more often.

Some people with cyclone dust collectors put a catcher bin below their cartridge filters. This will contain dust that they knock off the pleated media, and prevent dust accumulation in the cartridge. If you have a single-stage machine, then the dust bin is usually already below the filter.

Jet and Powermatic dust collectors have a flapper device inside their cartridge filters that allows you to crank a handle that rotates flexible paddles to flick off dust from the inside of the cartridge, keeping your pressure drop in check. Some say that all you need to do is tap the top of the cartridge. I have a pleated cartridge filter on my shop vacuum, and I have to bang the top pretty hard to knock off the excess dust. I wonder how much maintenance a full-size dust collector cartridge filter is; if you have one let everyone know in the comments below.

As far as the required surface area is concerned, the “air-to-cloth ratio” can vary depending on the filter media material, and the desired pressure drop. Different levels of filtration will naturally have different pressure drops per sq. inch of filter material.

If the static pressure is too high (meaning not enough filter area) particles can be forced through the material anyway and damage the filter. I would size them assuming a dirty filter condition with a permanent dust cake established (the dust that remains after a light tapping). Ask your manufacturer for a “dirty filter” pressure drop per sq. ft. of filter, then do some math yourself. Ask them the recommended “safe” static pressure and aim for less than that.

I use a cartridge filter for my shop vacuum. I had this temporary filter cloth on it while I was sucking up drywall dust, so the filter wouldn’t get all clogged up. It did cause quite a pressure drop so I just use the filter by itself normally and it works ok. I sometimes wonder if the pressure causes particles to be forced through the media as it loads up with more and more dust. Anyone measure that?

A Blurb About Air Cleaners

I don’t currently own an air cleaner, because my brain is going back and forth on the proper way to deal with already-airborne fine dust. I’m not sure the “conventional” ceiling suspended air cleaner is the ideal way to go yet. I hope to learn from comments people leave as I continue to read as much as I can.

If you do want one, size for at least a 5 minute air change rate, which is your shop’s volume divided by 5 minutes to get the CFM. Just be aware that you’re not evenly sending air from all parts of your shop through the filter; the air closest to the intake will be recirculated many times before the air in the far corner will even make its way over. Some say the actual time to filter all the air is around 7 times longer than the calculated “air change rate”. If I use air cleaners, I’m thinking maybe use at least two units in my 3-car garage-sized shop.

Be careful with placement also, because if the air cleaner suspended high you’re not cleaning the “breathing zone” air like you may think, and if your shop is dusty you may be stirring that up with the air currents it’s creating…more reason to wear a mask…not to mention you want the air cleaner to filter to MERV 15 or 16 levels if you can (but that can quickly load up the filters), so use a series of filters and a pressure-drop indicator to know it’s time to change them.

By leaving the unit on when you leave, you will return for the next session to a cleaner shop, so I think for this reason it’s worth getting one.

You can float around the internet to find endless debate. My thought is that if it’s a nice day you may be better off exchanging inside air with outside air using cross-ventilation. I’m gonna do this with my finishing room; put an exhaust fan in front of me (where I breathe) and a make-up air louver (with a filter) behind me drawing in air from outside across my breathing zone and back outside away from me.

You could look into clean room design, and implement HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Arrestance) or ULPA (Ultra Low Penetration Air) filters, but I think that’s overkill. An HVAC air handler could be dedicated to the shop and distribute a 5-minute air change rate worth of air and have HEPA filter return grilles distributed around the shop. This would take quite a motor to handle the static pressure (calculated using the longest run, return air plus supply), but you’d have clean air!

You could also have a vestibule or mud room with doors on either side that has an “air shower” to decontaminate you, but using compressed air to dust off outside is easier.

Things like sanding I like to do outside using saw horses on my concrete patio, but sometimes I hafta do that inside (when it’s late for the neighbors’ sake, or too hot or cold out). That’s where I think a powerful downdraft table with really good filtration would be a good idea.

Any door from your shop to your house should be weatherstripped. My eventual plan is to have two doors for soundproofing reasons, and will help prevent dust from getting in since both doors will be sealed.

Remember This

At least make some improvements to your overall dust collection system, especially your filtration, even if you don’t want to go “all out”, but know your overall options and aim high.

Don’t make the mistake of undersizing your filters. This is a big deal because excessive dust buildup will reduce the air permeability of the filter, and the high pressures can force particles through, defeating the purpose and damaging cartridge type filters. It also reduces your CFM, which is bad because now you’re not picking up dust as effectively, which leaves it in a cloud near where you’re standing.

Where you tend to make small dust particles is with sanding. I’ve long wanted a downdraft table. Right now I hook a shop vacuum to power sanders but adding a properly designed downdraft table would be better. On a nice day, I find wearing a dust mask outside using saw horses works even better, and I don’t have to wipe anything down afterward.

If you’re dust sensitive, or using higher-than-normal toxic wood, you’ll want to take multiple measures including:

Wearing a NIOSH-rated cartridge dust mask certified for the really fine wood dust in the 0.5 or better range (most people don’t bother, I know)
Use general exhaust ventilation with good crossflow using open doors (during good weather). This works pretty well for me, but hey I live in California
Using a really high quality ambient air cleaner on bad weather days or if you can’t get outside air cross-ventilation (see the blurb on air cleaners above)
Sealed door jambs to your house (I have compressible weatherstripping on my fire door),
Use compressed air (while wearing a mask) and dust yourself off outside before re-entering your house, and
Frequently wipe dust powder off shop surfaces and the floor since it gets stirred up so easily (why rebreathe it?).

I measured 6,500 fpm out of my planer duct, which is about 567 cfm. This has been enough to keep dust and chips away, but since this is close to the collector if I use a 5” duct and connection port I bet I could increase to a much better number to help pull in more. I’ll test 5” and 6” and see what velocities I get with my new filter bags. Some other improvements I plan to make include smoother flex duct and a better hose clamp. This type doesn’t sit quite right.

Yeah, you can design to forum-approved “clean room” standards with HEPA or ULPA filters if you want, but I realize that a particle or two will make its way up my nose, just like you can’t avoid germs unless you live in a bubble. I have a vacuum cleaner that filters allergens, but it still stirs up dust that isn’t captured. Think about it, the outside air has a certain level of dust anyway. But certain wood species may cause allergic reactions or is just plain not good to breathe, so you do want to minimize your exposure to that. My goal is to reduce my exposure by:

Improving filtration to small particle sizes, around 1 micron at least (if you can, do less than a micron …)
Reducing filter pressure drop (my goal is 0.5”)
Properly sizing the filter (under dust-loaded conditions) to keep airflows the best they can be
Optimizing capture at the source the best you can using custom shields/ enclosures
Getting enough CFM at particular tools, and
Keeping the shop a bit cleaner by wiping up dust from surfaces so you don’t stir it up and rebreathe it.

I have dry weather and a garage roll-up door, so it’s easy for me to hose down the floor every so often. I do this every few months.

Realize that this whole shop evolution thing is a process, and if you did everything at once you’d spend 10 years building your shop with zero projects to show for it. So just integrate these improvements in priority order as you go along. But certainly don’t make dust collection an afterthought; integrate it into your workshop design.

Garage Shop Convenience Outside!

Bobby — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:32:46 +0000

After installing the exhaust fan in my remodeled bathroom, I sealed the vent termination. Later, when the house is painted, it’ll blend in seamlessly. Water intrusion was the main concern. There is a built-in backdraft damper inside to limit air infiltration.

Just like with building a house, there are things to do to the exterior of your garage shop to give you the day-to-day convenience you crave.

You also don’t want to be surprised by all the things that will affect the exterior walls of your shop, like air conditioner refrigerant line penetrations, louvers, exterior light fixtures, and conduit to power outbuildings for lumber storage. All of those things need to be waterproofed, but the good news is you can draw those details when you plan your wall layers.

If you include the things mentioned below in your overall woodshop design plan, it’ll be easy. Do your thinking now, and the whole process can be done assembly-line style.

At Your Service

You’re outside. Still doing woodworking, but setting up two saw horses to sand a batch of cabinet doors. You’d like to be next to your shop, but the nearest outlet is inside your shop, requiring an extension cord. Now you have to untangle that…

When I moved in my house 4 years ago, one of the first projects I did was install two outdoor convenience outlets. One at my front door so I could use my electric trimmers in the yard, and one outside my workshop so I could work out there without worry.

What other utilities do you want? Water? Light to work in the evening? Motion-activated security light?

These conduit body fittings allow future access to wiring that will run to the outbuildings. For now, They’re unpowered, and the wall penetrations into the garage shop are sealed.

Lighting

My house, when I bought it, really lacked light. Inside and out. Just a few builder-provided cheesy light fixtures on the exterior, that’s it. Since I do a lot of woodworking and making stuff at night, this was a problem for me.

In my side yard, outside my garage shop, a corner is formed by the shop that the single light fixture can’t get to, so it’s dark there. In my woodshop plan, I’m putting in three light fixtures. One on each corner controlled by a switch, and another one for security controlled by a motion sensor. A motion sensor beeps inside my house if it’s triggered, letting me know some live creature is in the area.

Water

To me this is a big deal. During my “whole-shop cleanouts”, I like to take everything that I can wash and put it on the concrete and hose it all down. Having another hose bib also lets me water plants in that area, as well as hose down the exterior of the shop when it gets dirty.

In fact, I even extended that pipe into my shop and put a hose bib there too. I use it to wash down the floor once every three or four months to clean out any debris or cobwebs, and gives me the opportunity to reorganize things.

Electrical

As mentioned above, you’ll probably want at least one outdoor convenience outlet. I have a 20A outlet, 120V. Some may even want a 220V outlet. Now, since it’s outside, it’ll need to be waterproofed, and in an approved weather-proof box. Check your local building department (Electrical Plan Check) for a list of requirements that an inspector would want to see.

For the most part, I use this outlet for sanding, cutting up larger items with a reciprocating saw to fit in my trash, and garden tools. I control this outlet with a switch from inside my shop so nobody can use my electricity while I’m away.

Also, don’t forget to do stuff for the future. I know, for example, that I want to build two small outbuildings. One would be for mass lumber storage, and the other would be a finishing room to keep things dust-free and easy to clean.

But, my electrical panel is in my shop. I ran conduit through the outside wall of my shop, installed a junction box with access, and then some conduit under the cement slab to the approximate area of the future buildings.

This outlet serves the side yard and the workshop. I use it when I set up saw horses to sand, spray finish on a nice day, or use electric yard tools. Since there’s a nice large concrete slab, I find myself using a reciprocating saw and cutting up stuff to fit in the trash.

Create an Air-Sealed Envelope for Your Workshop

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I love to seal all gaps airtight. That’s so the shop can hold a relatively constant temperature, keep out bugs, and keep sound from coming in or leaving.

But sealing the interior walls isn’t enough. The exterior walls want the same treatment.

What exactly needs to be sealed?

Plan for these things on the workshop walls:

Hose bib piping going through the wall, ¾”
Exterior light fixture junction box (controlled by switch)
Exterior security light
Plumbing lines to your shop bathroom (should you want one), including waste and vent, cold water, hot water.
Fresh air intake louvers (since my shop will be tightly sealed, I’ll probably want an energy-recovery intake fan).
Conduits going from the shop or to the shop.
Refrigerant lines from your indoor AC unit to the outdoor condensing unit.
Condensate drain from the workshop AC unit.
Gas line to your shop’s heater.
Flue vents from water heaters, or your shop’s gas heater.
Exhaust vents or “eyebrows” from dryers or other fans.
Dust collection exhaust (if you live in a large enough property to do that…but then you’ll need an intake louver too).
Solatube or other skylight fixtures.
Any attachments to the wall like vine trellises used for shade.

Looks like a lot, right? Well your actual list will probably be much less when you eliminate the items that don’t apply to you.

WoodChip Tip: You can use sheet metal flashing/ counterflashing, caulking, and spray foam to seal cracks, seams, and small openings. Keep in mind that spray foam may not put up with direct exposure. You should protect these foamed openings with a harder material to prevent rats and other things from getting through. A tip I’ve heard is embed steel wool in cavities because rats won’t chew it; it cuts their mouth so they avoid it.

After I sealed this new exhaust vent, I also took the time to seal some cracks around the gable louvers you see above. Adding a tighter screen also helps keep small debris and bugs out. The builder installed a ¼” wire mesh, which is inadequate.

Below is an example of a detail I’m using for duct penetrations to my walls. There are many ways of doing this, but you can Google around online for the different methods people use. You should walk around the outside of your existing shop and check for missing or cracked caulking, evidence of moisture damage, and other opportunities for tightening up your shop’s envelope. You’ll have less bugs, and it’ll be easier for your workshop to hold temperature.

I’m using this detail for my dryer duct that runs along the wall between the house and garage shop. In the future, I may add an exhaust duct and fresh air intake duct.

Here I’m on my walk-around, using special stucco sealant, which will keep the “sandy” texture of the stucco. When the house is painted, these repairs will disappear. When doing this, think like a bug, and a drop of water. The screen you see to the right is my exterior solar shade. Makes a HUGE difference in the summer.

Landscape

I’m using landscape for several things, and there are some important features you’ll want to incorporate now so you don’t have to come back later and fix them.

I’m adding foliage for a bit of shade, which includes some bushes/ fountain grass, and a wall trellis to shade my south wall. The trellis will be mounted a few inches away from the wall surface, but will be mounted to the wall.

Also, if you have a window, it may be wise to plant some cactus or other spiky plant to deter a burglar from getting easy access to it.

To prevent bugs from easily marching and living all over your house or woodworking shop, keep plants from touching the structure (and providing a bridge) as much as practical. They can still get to your house, but don’t make it easy and inviting.

Be careful you don’t provide “shelter” for a burglar where they can be hidden from view. Remember thieves hate to be seen, so make sure you’re not providing a prowler a line-of-sight shield. This will make them feel constantly uneasy, and they’ll more likely be spooked and move on. This makes alarms more effective too.

Lastly, purposely slope your soil away from your structure/ slab or crawlspace. This will help prevent water from accumulating and sitting there, which will rot your siding or framing.

I’m putting in a French drain type system to handle rain; it’ll collect and whisk it away further down the yard. I also added rain gutters a few years ago so that I control where the water goes, rather than it all splashing on the ground and getting the lower part of the wall full of mud.

If you have a basement, you’ll probably want to really waterproof the walls, especially the portions that are buried, and also have a drainage system to keep water from accumulating along your exterior. A backup sump pump seems like a good idea in case you do get basement flooding while you’re not home.

WoodChip Tip: Since I live in a hot climate, my goal is to put as much of the shop walls in shadow as I can. Trellises, decorative grass, and even sculptural screens would help.

Roof

I know it sounds like I said seal everything, but actually it’s seal your shop’s envelope. Remember that depending on your roof system (i.e. attic vs. cathedral), your envelope may not really include your roof. I have an attic style roof, so I’ll have an insulated ceiling. The ceiling is the boundary of my shop’s envelope. The goal in this system is keep the space within the envelope at a comfortable temperature for humans, but have the attic temperature mimic the outdoor temperature to avoid moisture problems. You don’t want the attic to be warm during the winter or you’ll get tons of moisture problems, including ice dams. Likewise, you don’t want the attic to get heat trapped in the summer and becomes degrees hotter than outside. The way to keep the attic the way it wants to be is to ventilate it.

This means that you’ll have holes on the exterior of your shop or house. For me, I have soffit vents at the low end of the roof, and a gable louver vent at the high end of the roof. Some people have ridge vents along the apex of the roof.

While I want air to get in my attic via convection (hot air rises and draws in outside air in, etc.), I don’t want water to get in. So, my soffit vents are deep under the roof eave or overhang, and my gable vent is a louver with vanes that are designed to keep water coming from above (rain) out.

Also, I don’t want burning embers getting sucked in during a brush fire. This is a very common cause of hundreds of homes igniting during brush fire season. Many homes by default are fitted with ¼” mesh screens over their vents, but I installed 1/8” or finer mesh because ¼” isn’t effective at all. They also sell products specifically designed to prevent this. I opted to spray the inside of the truss bays, especially near the soffit vents, with a fire retardant, and to line the inside of the holes with firecaulk. I put a screen over the gable louver too.

This condensate overflow drain pipe was virtually unsealed by the builder. Doing a quick survey around your house or workshop, preferably with sealant in-hand will tighten up your envelope, keeping you bug-free and your heating/ cooling systems from running less often.

Think About Rainy Days

As you might have experienced, rainy days are awesome. There’s something about being in the shop on a rainy day. But, what if your shop is across the yard? What if your lumber shed is 50 ft. away?

A sheltered walkway between these structures would be really handy. Since my outbuildings are remote from my shop (but not too far) I can put in an architecturally pleasing walkway shelter from point A to point B. It’ll help shade part of my yard, too.

Plus, by having a nice paved path, you can roll a shop cart to carry lumber from one building to the other. I see myself carting projects to be finished from the garage shop to the finishing room using this path.

Also consider putting an overhang near the access door to the outside. It’s nice to be able to step out the door and be under a shelter while watching the rain.

For more guidance in assembling your Workshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

And, if you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow #woodchat every Wednesday night, at 6:00 pm, PST.

Gotta get more clamps,

Garage Shop Convenience Outside! is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part II

Bobby — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:03:07 +0000

Doing some simple things when you’re installing drywall like sealing your stud bays, adding radiant barriers, foam insulation, or decoupling your drywall from the structure can make a big difference in your acoustical and thermal comfort .

In the last post, How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part I, I explained how I break down my sound abatement strategy to both limit the sound coming from my tools and limit the sound allowed to escape the shop to bother others.

I just categorized the approach like this:

Sound Source Control

Sound Escape Control

I described exactly what I’ve done (and am still doing on a few machines) to control the source of all the noise, right at the tools. Now, I’ll walk you through how I prevent the leftover noise from bothering family members and neighbors (and you, too).

This is your last line of defense, so make it good.

Sound Escape Control

Controlling sound escape means somehow blocking or absorbing the sound within your shop so it never leaves the shop envelope, basically your sound bubble.

Create an Air-Sealed Envelope

The most important and effective thing you can do is air seal your shop envelope. I mean totally seal it off; floors, stud bays, around outlets, and ceilings. Don’t forget to account for fresh air or it’ll get awfully stale in there. But if you can do it mechanically, or at least use a sound-insulated lined sheet metal duct to the outside, it’s better than a plain louver in your wall. Just make sure you don’t have a line of sight from a fresh air intake to the outside; use a long serpentine shaped duct instead, and line the inside with 1” sound insulation.

If you go through all the effort to sound-insulate your shop only to have holes in the envelope (leaky door seals/ weatherstripping, combustion air vents, leaky windows) you’ve wasted a lot of time. Sound travels readily through air, so you don’t want to be on the outside of your shop (or worse in the house) and have given the air a way to freely transmit that sound without interruption.

Do these things to your shop bubble:

Seal each stud bay separately
Make sure any top plate penetrations are fire-caulked
Seal bottom plates to the foundation
Use special drywall, such as QuietRock
Caulk all drywall corners: ceilings, floor, adjacent walls, door frames
Weatherstrip your doors, including the threshold
If you have a roll-up garage door, do your best to align the side seals
Buy a rubber, squishable bottom door-seal for your roll-up door
Add weatherstripping/ gaskets anywhere you can between roll-up door panels & seal even small holes
Seal your shop’s window frames
Add gaskets around your outlets and switches under the decorative plates
Do something about wall/ roof openings with a direct line of sight to outside (louvers); install a “sound boot”, which is an insulation- lined duct elbow
Add sound putty around outlet boxes
Window-mounted or thru-the-wall PTAC (packaged terminal air conditioning) units allow sound to go right through your walls. Consider a split system unit so you only have refrigerant piping going through your walls, which you can seal
Seal any duct/ pipe/ electrical penetrations throughout

Of course, these measures will have thermal benefits as well. You’ll be much happier with your ability to heat the shop and keep it warm with little energy.

Appliances in the Shop

In my shop, I have a water heater in there. It’s a gas-fired unit, so it needs combustion air. Right now it’s open to the shop, which is bad because a dusty environment plus a gas flame can’t be good.

My plan is to enclose the water heater completely, but now I’ll need a source for combustion air intake. How you do this is defined by your local building codes (usually under Mechanical). For me, I’m following the California Mechanical Code.

So, sizing per this code, I’m adding combustion air louvers toward the outside, with the water heater enclosed in closet and sealed off from the shop.

WoodChip Tip: Doors are notoriously hard to air seal. If you have a door leading to your house from your garage or basement shop, or an exterior door, really consider using an airlock type system using two doors. You can either have the two doors separated by a foot or so, or you can create a vestibule or “mud room” element. This will help keep dust out of your house, and will do wonders for your sound blocking efforts. See below for what this will look like in my shop.

My door plan. The goals of this design are: Fire, Security, Sound, and Thermal protection. Note the wedge-shaped jambs and threshold; these help the kick-resistance of the door, and also eliminate a line-of-sight opening into the shop.

Assuming you’ve air-sealed your shop to keep sound from escaping the “easy way”, you can think of your overall strategy as reflecting & blocking sound, preventing sound transmission, and absorbing sound.

This means carefully designing your wall and ceiling layers, thinking about your door system (yes, system!), window system, ventilation, and floors with sound reflection, absorption, and vibration transmission in mind.

Carefully Design Your Wall and Ceiling Layers

Each of your loud tools has a range of frequencies, and a dB (noise level) associated with each frequency. So you have to incorporate design strategies to mitigate both higher frequency ranges as well as the lower octave bands.

You don’t really need to get too deep into the science of it, but you should understand what different types of materials do, and how best to employ them.

Different materials you use for your walls, ceilings, doors, and floors have sound absorbing, sound transmission, and sound-reflecting properties (how the various frequency bands affect it). Of course you can’t have a wall made entirely of insulation, or it would have a tough time supporting your roof. So you will need to consider the various materials you plan to use, and how they’re layered and adhered to each other.

My wall design is geared toward both thermal and acoustical protection, both for myself and my neighbors.

Lower Frequencies and Vibration

Assuming you’ve done or are planning on doing the things mentioned in the last post to lessen tool vibration, the remaining noise that strikes your walls, floors, doors, windows, and ceilings will vibrate those materials. Your goal is to keep those vibrations from reaching the other side as much as possible.

Most sound-absorbing insulation is good at mid-to-high frequency ranges. Lower frequencies are harder to attenuate, and require a heavier mass material. It’s up to you as to how far you go, but I’m finding that for reasonable amounts of money, spent smartly, I can be highly effective.

Materials in direct contact with each other will transmit the vibration from one side of the wall to the other, effectively creating a sound-transmission path. So even if you don’t want to spend much money on things like mass-loaded vinyl (designed specifically for low-frequency sound attenuation), or Acoustiblok, you can stop much of it from going through your wall via direct vibration transmission.

What I like to do is decouple at least one layer to minimize the direct contact with the structure.

One way to do this is to build two walls right next to each other, with a 1” air space between them. Another way of doing this is to use construction adhesive, Green Glue Compound, or my favorite, dry caulk “squiggles” on the studs before I install the drywall or other layer. Still another method is to use resilient drywall channels, or better yet, “sound clips”. These are z-shaped cross-section metal strips that you screw the drywall to. Another part of the channel is screwed to the studs, creating a bit of a spring-cushion.

Basement ceilings will benefit tremendously by decoupling. Even if you have dropped “acoustical” ceiling tiles, adding a decoupled layer of drywall somewhere (using resilient sound clips) will give you better lower frequency performance. Be sure to attach the sound clips directly to the joists.

Here I’m using firecaulk as my cushion between my drywall and the studs. I’m purposely allowing the foam insulation in-fill to protrude a little bit so that the drywall has a flush surface.

WoodChip Tip: What’s weird is that a “double wall” with gyp. board only on the outside layers performs better (better STC rating, see below), as opposed to ALSO having gyp. in the “inside” airspace between. You can read more on the “triple leaf effect” at http://www.soundisolationstore.com/research-the-triple-leaf-effect. On my wall between the house and the shop, I want to leave the original fire wall intact, with gyp. on both sides. However, with the second decoupled wall I may put drywall on the side facing the interior of the shop and omit the inside layer. I’ll still fireblock at the top for the whole thing, though.

Lower frequencies are best absorbed by dense materials. They make mass-loaded vinyl products, Acoustiblok sheets, or you can look into using cement board. I just plan on adding two layers of drywall separated by dry caulk squiggles. One layer will be ½”, and the other will be 5/8” so that each resonates at a different frequency. I figure there’s enough mass/ density there to do what I need, and I have a 1-1/2” thick cement stucco scratch-coat layer on my wall’s exterior.

The more you can mimic a “room within a room” the better your design will perform.

Garage Roll-Up Doors

On my roll-up door, I can’t add anything too heavy or the motor won’t be able to lift it. Since it’s made of sheet metal, I may spray the inside with a sound-dampening coating to lessen the vibration in addition to adding foam insulation panels. Also see the post about the thermal comfort , specifically the section on insulating the garage doors. In my climate, it’s a no-brainer to have an airspace and radiant barrier foil at these insulation panels.

If it’s a really critical thing for you, you could purchase heavy sound-absorbing curtains and simply draw them closed in front of your roll-up door when your shop is in session. I may add something like that later on if I have the money.

Whether you have a sliding barn door or a roll-up door, you can add a sound-absorbing curtain in front of it. My current door is a roll-up type, and I’m adding foam radiant barrier panels covered with cloth for aesthetics. But that doesn’t absorb sound too well, and besides sealing the frame edges, I think this would help reduce what the neighbors hear quite a bit.

Mid-Range and High Frequencies

Sound insulation, soundboard, and certain types of foam typically are good in the mid to high frequency range. You could look up the sound attenuation properties of different materials in each octave band, say the 63 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 2000 Hz, 4000 Hz, and 8000 Hz frequency ranges, and see how much (in dB) reduction you get in each octave band.

Or, much more simply, you can Google STC rating (Sound Transmission Class) of various wall systems, or read sites such as STCratings.com. The higher the STC number the better. The way to increase your STC is use the techniques above, namely decoupling layers, adding mass, and adding materials that absorb sound. I would target an STC in the 60-range.

Now, be careful in that STC isn’t used for evaluating how much lower frequency noise is vibrationally transmitted through your wall. Take care of that by decoupling your layers and adding mass.

It’s critical that even pinhole leaks are sealed to get the soundproofing you want. I’m sealing all the sill plates, top plates, stud bays, and any other penetration by piping and wires.

Extra Credit

If you have a particularly loud machine near a wall, you might want to provide an extra sound-absorbent panel right at that wall. Cloth-covered panels, or special sound absorbent products would be good here, since it’s in a limited application and won’t get too expensive.

It probably can’t hurt to plant some foliage next to an exterior wall between you and your neighbor. I’m doing that more for the cooling/ shading effect, but I’m sure there’s some sound absorption there.

Another thing I’m doing is adding a Lexan (a clear plastic material) panel to the inside of my window, with a hinge and latch, and gasket all around. This will have a thermal (and a bit of security) benefit as well. If you’re adding a window to your shop, get a dual-pane, Low-e model. For not much more money you’ll enjoy the benefit of its solar and acoustical performance.

Currently I don’t have any windows in my shop, but I’m going to add a few. I’m thinking round porthole windows because they look cool. I want some natural light, and I also like to be able to look outside (sometimes you hear a loud noise and it’s nice to be able to see if your neighborhood is on fire). But windows present a thermal, security, and sound problem which can be solved through design.

Sound Reverberation (Your Own Sanity)

Taking measures to reduce the sound heard by your neighbors and family is very nice of you, but while you’re at it take care of yourself too. Avoid highly sound-reflective layers as the final inside layer. You don’t want sound bouncing all over your shop and back to you. Having a sound reflective layer within your envelope will help keep sound from escaping, but back it on both sides by absorptive layers.

Also, taking a cue from theaters, you can suspend cloth-covered soundboard or acoustical tile panels either vertically or horizontally in your shop to interrupt reflected sound as it bounces around. These are an effective way to baffle sound within your shop.

In my previous post, Smithy commented that having non-90 degree corners can help with sound amplification, or at least the perception of it. If you’re standing at a loud machine (which is usually where you’ll be while it’s on), that tool is sending soundwaves out that hit the corners of your shop. 90 degree corners reflect this sound directly back to you. This is because the angle of incidence = the angle of reflection. Notice that stealth aircraft don’t have tail surfaces 90 degrees to each other. This is because if a radar wave hits the vertical tail at any angle, it’ll bounce off that and the perpendicular horizontal tail and back to the source, thus allowing detection of the plane. So, maybe think about making your ceilings at non-90 degree angles to your walls for both decorative effect and sound reasons. Notice the Lexan panel on my window design above.

The Angle of Incidence = Angle of Reflection. No matter what angle you hit a wall with a light beam, soundwave, etc., it will reflect off at the exact same angle (if it's a relatively flat wall) in the same plane. Now, in a 90 degree corner situation, this reflection hits the other wall at the 90 minus the original angle, and reflects off of that 2nd wall. This "90 minus Original Angle" happens to aim right back atcha! Stealth designers know this, that's why you don't see panels at 90 deg. angles to each other on those aircraft.

Are These Things a Part of Your Design?

Below are the main things to do to your shop’s shell:

Buy lots of caulking and spray foam and seal everything inside your walls and ceiling. Good for keeping ants out, and helps your shop keep temperature too.
Weatherstrip around your doors, including the bottom threshold.
Build your shop around any household appliances that have to stay; try to keep them walled off and access sealed. Provide required ventilation via the outdoors or duct it.
Plan your wall layers taking into account thermal comfort, sound, and security.
Decouple wall surfaces that absorb your machine vibration from the shop structure. Isolate things that generate or absorb sound.
Deal with the elephant in the room first; things like super-leaky garage roll-up doors, uninsulated basement ceilings, single-pane windows.
Make sure you’re both absorbing sound and blocking sound from escaping. Reflect sound back into an absorbent material on purpose.

Remember that a lot of little things will add up to a much quieter shop. Or you can just hand out hearing protection to all of your neighbors and family…

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

And, if you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow #woodchat every Wednesday night, at 6:00 pm, PST.

Gotta get more clamps,

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part II is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part I

Bobby — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:53:52 +0000

Making simple changes to your machines will minimize the noise; I’ve found the things mentioned below make a big difference for little cost. It’s kind of a fun challenge too.

I’m particularly sensitive to shop noise because I had several neighbors near my shop. Below me and next door to my apartment bedroom shop.

For the most part, I restricted my woodworking to when my neighbors weren’t home, either during lunch or when they went out somewhere.

I got creative with sound-attenuating strategies so if I made a few quick power-tool cuts, it wouldn’t be as bad. I swore that when I built my ultimate shop, I’d incorporate quite insane soundproofing so that I could do whatever I wanted in complete freedom.

Soundproofing your woodshop is vital to maximizing your freedom. Imagine if you could do woodworking anytime–late night or early morning without fear!

I’m also realizing that many of these strategies have other comfort and security benefits as well.

Simplify the Approach

I like to categorize things to simplify how I attack a problem; it’s drilled into any engineer’s skull over and over. So, I can’t help but to do that with things like this. I need to eliminate sound as a problem. Both to my ears and to others’ ears.

To do that, I hafta do two things. Control the sound source, and also control sound escape out of my shop.

Simply put, controlling the sound source means doing things to the machines themselves to limit how much sound they generate into the shop. Controlling the sound escape means somehow blocking or absorbing the sound so it never leaves my shop walls or ceiling, a sound bubble.

It’s like creating two rings of defense. If you do a perfect job at silencing the tools, you are done at that point. Having to soundproof your envelope is necessary because your tools will still generate unacceptable noise, even after you reduce it using the methods outlined below.

Of course, you could switch to hand tools entirely, but that’s not gonna happen for most people. I do use hand tools when they’re faster (swipe a chamfer, clean up a tenon, etc.).

I like to go after the sound source first. The router table’s dust chamber is lined with two layers of soundboard. Closing this off with a door helps with dust collection too. The air intake is through the throat plate, which is how I want the air to flow.

Sound Source Control

To start, of course, we need to identify all the sources. Just list them, then expand on each one with a mini-tasklist of things you’ll do. Typically these are tools with a universal motor, but some tools that have an induction motor are loud enough to be worth treating. My list looks like this:

Shop Vacuum
Jointer
Table Saw
Benchtop Planer
Dust Collector
Handheld Power Tools
Router Table

Each of these tools has a range of frequencies, and a noise level (measured in dB) associated with each frequency.

Some, like my shop vacuum, scream with a high pitched noise. Some shake and rumble at low frequencies. Some are louder in the mid-range. Low vs. high frequency sounds have different strategies that are most effective.

Below, I’ll walk you through what I’ve done and will be doing to mitigate tool vibration from being transmitted to your shop structure, and how to use both sound absorbing and sound-reflecting strategies to limit the level of sound in your shop.

When I put my Delta 8” jointer together, I had rubber washers, adhesive-backed foam, and sound-dampening spray at the ready (I bought them while waiting for the jointer to be shipped). Here you can see that the cast iron jointer bed sits on the cabinet but is separated by a foam sheet.

Higher & Mid-Range Frequencies

When I put together my Jointer, I decided to line the cabinet with adhesive-backed sound-absorbing foam. I also wanted to keep the sheet metal panels on the cabinet from vibrating and making noise, so I used rubber washers at many of the fasteners, being careful not to apply these washers where precision machined parts must fit together.

But certain parts like the cabinet don’t matter for machine performance, so that’s what I focused on.

For my router table, I lined the chamber surrounding the router with several layers of soundboard separated by dry beads of caulking and construction adhesive.

For my planer, I used sticky-back foam sheets to help absorb some of the noise. I still have a ways to go on this machine. High frequency noise seems to be the problem range here.

On other machines with metal cabinets, you can consider sound-dampening spray found in auto parts stores. It’s basically a rubberized coating that dampens the vibrations transmitted to the sheet metal from the machine’s motor and cutterheads.

The goal of all this is to absorb as much of the sound as I can right at the source, either near the blades and cutters or the motor.

Remember that when the blades contact the wood, a lot of the noise is generated right there. Sometimes, there’s not much you can do about that (some blades and bits perform better than others, though. If you know of any that are exceptionally good, let me know in the comments below!!).

Now, you can’t really totally seal your tool motors in an airtight chamber, or they might overheat. But you can use a baffle design to eliminate a line-of-sight path for sound to leave the tool cabinet.

The more surface area of absorbent material you put in there, the more sound will be absorbed. Another reason to use zero-clearance throat plates for table saws and router tables is they help close off the path to the motor noise.

Haven’t opened this for a long time, but thought I’d take a picture for the blog. I sprayed the whole inside of the cabinet with sound-deadening spray to keep some of the sheet metal vibrations down to a minimum. Last thing I want to do is create a speaker box for the motor.

Take a look at sound booths at recording studios and anechoic chambers for inspiration. Often, the texture of the sound-lined walls is full of small bumps. These are typically triangular, and at very acute angles. This is to increase the surface area for the sound to be absorbed. Also, any sound that hits these sloped surfaces and reflects off of them (the part that isn’t absorbed) reflect at an angle that leads it right into another part of the insulation, usually an adjacent pyramid. So, the sound is trapped and the reflected waves keep getting progressively more absorbed.

You can do something similar; introduce sound-absorbent panel baffles at acute angles to each other inside your tool cabinets (keep in mind how dust will interact with these surfaces, i.e. don’t encourage accumulation).

Sometimes there are products specifically designed to reduce sound on power tools. Shop vacuum mufflers are available; I have one and it works a bit (every bit helps), but it’s not a miracle cure. You could design your own too. Some people have built enclosures with baffles for the exit air, to eliminate the line-of-sight from the noise source.

Muffler-like duct silencers are also available to place your dust collection system, meant for centralized collectors. These are expensive, but if sound is a big issue for you, maybe look into them. If you can get one designed specifically for your collector’s frequency ranges, that’s the ideal way to go.

Most sound-absorbing insulation is good at mid-to-high frequency ranges. Lower frequencies, which I’ll discuss below, are harder to attenuate.

WoodChip Tip: When modifying your tools, make sure that what you’re doing won’t interfere with the tool’s operation, affect its accuracy, or void the warranty. For me, I’m way past the warranty periods so I don’t really care about that, but I sure don’t want to use rubber washers in a location that’ll mess up whether something’s bolted straight or in a precision way!

Here’s one of the rubber washers I used to help block the path of vibrations.

Lower Frequencies and Vibration

Since my first shop was on the second floor, I had a really big interest in limiting the vibrations that were being transmitted to the floor sheathing and joists for my neighbor to enjoy.

Think of the sound or vibration as travelling a path through solid material, and when that ends, and hits the air, it’ll continue on to hit your ears. If it ends at the floor, and vibrates the whole floor, you’ve just provided a nice amplifier. However, if you can block this path, i.e. a sound-break, with an absorbent dampening material, you can make a big difference in the low-frequency noise emanating from your machines. Adding mass to your flooring system will also help. For my shop, I have concrete floors which are good for absorbing the vibration.

Lower frequencies tend to travel farther as well, so these are important to tackle.

I do several things to attack the low-end frequencies. First, I try to dampen them at the source. Secondly, I try to prevent them from being transmitted to the floor from the tool stand or cart.

To help reduce your machine vibrations, look into those red link belts to replace the stock belt that came with your tool. I have one in my jointer and it’s awesome. Balancing of the rotating parts is also important.

Now, for limiting the transmission to your floor, use vibration isolation between the parts of your overall tool station. Also block the solid material path. Where your tool sits on a mobile cart or base, use rubber/ neoprene vibration isolation pads. If you want your machines mobile, use rubber-wheeled casters. I go a step further and use a lot of rubber washers when assembling the tool cabinets, even rubber grommets at the caster plate attachment. Those little sound waves really have a tough time in my shop.

Adding mass is another common way to keep vibration at bay; my SawStop cabinet saw is tremendously beefy, and has significantly less vibration than my old Delta benchsaw. If you can afford to, get robust cast-iron versions of tools when you can.

You can buy these pads online; I suggest using them to separate the benchtop tools from their tool cart or table top, and also between the larger machines and their mobile bases. If you don’t have a mobile base, make sure you have a support frame or rails spanning between each pad.

Basically, Do These Things

If you understand the things that must be done to curb machine noise and vibration, you’ll be able to apply them to both new and old tools. I incorporate sound control into my shop design for each workstation, just as I include dust collection and electrical considerations.

Below are some quick things you can do when you don’t feel like running any more boards through the planer, or are sore from pulling a scraper:

Buy a bag of rubber washers and apply them to machine cabinet fasteners as long as it’s not a critical connection for precision alignment
Retrofit all of your tool stands to include rubber-wheeled casters, and look at using rubber grommets on the plate holes where you bolt them to the stand legs
Buy those square rubber vibration isolation blocks and use them to separate the tool from the mobile base or tool cart
Spray sound-dampening material on the insides of metal machine cabinets
Add sound insulation lining to machine cabinets, router table chambers
Use baffle-like sound shields made of sound-absorptive materials near motors and other noise sources without restricting heat dissipation for the motor.
Add additional sound absorbing material (perhaps backed by sound reflecting material) directly behind noisy machines that are against the wall
Safety guards around blades and bits do help with both dust collection and noise isolation, so it’s not a bad idea to use them when you can, especially over the table saw blade. Maybe make your own, and incorporate some sound-deadening strategies in addition to dust collection efficiency strategies.

Remember that a lot of little things will add up to a much quieter shop. You’ll feel much more free knowing that you won’t get complaints about your late night or early morning dust-making activities.

Next time, I’ll walk through how I’m dealing with sound escape, which primarily means treating the shop’s envelope. If you are working with unfinished walls, or are building your shop from scratch, you have an advantage. You can incorporate a more extreme version of soundproofing strategies in your walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and floors.

One of my design standards is to have every workstation mobile. Double-locking casters are a good way of doing that; another is to get a specialty caster that flips up and out of the way if you want. Either way, having a rubber wheel or a rubber pad will help prevent a lot of the vibration from transferring to the floor.

This is at the dust collector; I put rubber washers between the fan mount and the metal cart.

This is a scary look inside the jointer cabinet. The blue square is the rubber-foam vibration isolation block between the jointer cabinet and the mobile base. After doing all of these things, the jointer is barely audible while running. Can’t do much about when the blades contact wood, except treat the shop walls.

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

And, if you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow #woodchat every Wednesday night, at 6:00 pm, PST.

Gotta get more clamps,

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part I is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

Design the Bottlenecks Out of your Woodshop Workflow

Bobby — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:23:16 +0000

Working in my “apartment shop” taught me the importance of minimizing unnecessary tool set-up time. Designing a general workflow isn’t enough; the various bottlenecks need to be identified and designed out of your shop.

Think of your daily workflow in your shop like a highway system—eliminate the bottlenecks and you’ll experience what workflow implies: continuous progress.

You step into the shop with the intention of getting something pretty specific done. Ever wonder why it took three times as long as you thought? You guessed it, unexpected speedbumps.

You can continue to encounter them, spend time dealing with them as you go, then move on. Of course, you’ll re-discover them the next day or next week.

I find that most of these “bottlenecks” in my workflow are recurring, and can be designed out of my shop.

Interruptions in your pre-planned sequences also mean interruptions in thought, which leads to frustrating mistakes.

If you draw your design using a computer, you can overlay some path studies to determine your ways of working, and you can start to notice patterns. You can do this on a paper drawing, using a dry-erase marker and a piece of clear plastic.

One Word: Strategery

Think through your overall shop layout goals first using these posts as a guide, then you take it the rest of the way.

Then, make sure that the bottlenecks and speed bumps mentioned below, as well as a list of your own (probably a long list, like mine), are dealt with deliberately in your woodshop design.

Automate Your Dust Collection

How useful is a carefully designed workflow when you have to walk over to the dust collector, turn it on, then walk back to the tool station again before a cut? What about walking to the back of the table saw to open the blastgate?

As part of your Dust Collection design, integrate a remote control start/ stop. It’s really pretty inexpensive, too. I paid around $70 for the one Rockler offers. Totally worth it, especially since it affects me every time I’m in the shop. I hang the keychain on the wall at the entrance door, and I pick it up and put it on my belt-loop at the beginning of every shop session.

An often-forgotten bottleneck in your shop flow is where you put the blastgate. Most of the time, it’s located on a duct drop toward the back of the machine, and a flex hose is attached to that. There are several considerations for how to route this duct drop.

Keep the flex hose out of the way of outfeed and infeed stock
Keep the blastgate within arm’s reach while standing at the front workstation
Keep the flex hose off the floor or at least out of walking paths

The above three things all have to be considered, and one of them may be compromised somewhat, but the important thing here is that you think about it and make it a part of your design.

As I walk into the shop, I grab the keychain and put it on a belt loop, so it’s there when I need it.

Designate Areas for ‘Out of Workflow’ Stuff

When planning your shop layout, think about the spots in your shop where you rarely set foot. For me it’s all four corners, the overhead “attic” space, behind a door swing, and along the wall that divides my garage and house.

So, figure out what things must be in your shop zone, but aren’t really in your primary workflow for you.

These probably include:

Garden Stuff
Dust Collector
Shop Vacuum
Off-Site Construction Tools, Belts, Bags
Finished Product Storage
Sharpening Station (unless you are a turner, then it probably should go near your Lathe)
Library/ Info Station
Mass Lumber Storage
Non-Shop Storage (Bikes, household storage boxes, camping gear, etc.)

Once you have your list, look at it again. Does all that stuff even belong in your shop space? Could you (remember you are a woodworker…) build some storage cupboards or other built-in storage compartments inside your house, a garden shed, or outdoor cabinet to house some of this stuff? It’s a perfect excuse for a project, and you’ll benefit from it daily.

Do you have overhead space you’re not using? Put rarely-accessed storage in dust-protected clear plastic boxes, label them, and stash them up high.

I use this when I install stuff at someone’s house, but I think it’s too bulky to wear in the shop. So, I store this out of the general workflow.

Identify Repeat Processes, Design Your Layout Around Those

In the article Tool Clusters!, we looked at how creating process cells around a series of operations requiring several tools could make a tedious job much easier and less tiring.

The most common set of tasks for nearly all woodworkers is stock breakdown. These are the first things you do when you take a raw piece of wood and start to shape it into your designed part. It could be cutting long boards to length, breaking down large panels, or ripping planks to rough size. This begs for the lumber storage racks to be close to these machines, and lots of infeed/ outfeed space.

The next most common set of tasks involves milling boards to become flat, probably square, and have faces (usually) 90 degrees to each other. Typically this is “S4S”, or surfacing 4 sides of the stock. This sets the stage for other cuts and shaping operations, because you know that those faces will sit flat on your work tables, and the other faces are either parallel or perpendicular to that. From that precise base, you can now cut accurate angles, notches, grooves, etc. without worry.

Walking yourself through the above tasks, in order, will let you know what machines will be in the tool cluster, and then you can begin putting them in sequence to match how you work.

Once you have the basic cluster together in your shop, play-act (or actually perform) the typical sequence so you can tweak the machine station angles and distances.

Watch for infeed and outfeed room, room for you to maneuver, open space for a shop cart to hold the infeed and outfeed stock for you without cluttering the machine tables, and an overall shortening of travel distance. You may have to shuffle the machines a few times to get it right.

You may have some specialty processes that are unique to you, like turning processes, a production run of specific kinds of parts you often need to make, or hardware installation involving drilling holes and hinge mortises using templates. Ever think of creating dedicated stations or station groups for a few of these? Having duplicate tools to reduce set-up time?

Label and Color-Code Stuff

If you find yourself looking for something, stop and think about why that is. Could you do something to avoid that next time? Perhaps have several copies of that item around the shop? Paint a fluorescent spot or stripe on it? Color-code it? Put a bold-text label on its container?

Looking for stuff is definitely an interruption in your workflow and train of thought. Things I used to look for repeatedly were my marking pencil, ruler, engineer’s square, and those dang safety glasses. I solved those issues by keeping those attached to me the whole shop session.

If you notice, I have a Brother P-Touch labeler. Totally worth it. I label things to make finding them faster. A lot of the store-bought containers are clear, so I can quickly see what’s inside without opening each lid like a treasure hunt.

How to Keep Your Shop Tidy, Naturally

In the recent Storage article, I went through why I realized it’s critical that everything, down to every fastener, needs to have a logical home in my shop. Rather than fight against nature, I figured out how I naturally tend to keep things, and how things tend to stay clutter-free vs. messy.

Don’t force your storage locations; instead bend to your tendencies, even if it’s not in the “How to Organize Your Life” manual. Leaving masking tape on your assembly table surface may not be ideal, but don’t put it “away” across the shop. Instead, have a place for it within easy reach right at your assembly table. That way, when you clean up your shop, all you have to do is move most things a few feet and you’re done and clutter-free.

Tool Set-Up Slowdowns

When I first began woodworking (in my apartment bedroom shop), I was forced to slow down my woodworking. I’m talking super-turtley. This was because I could only “make noise” when my downstairs neighbor wasn’t home. When he was home, I’d do things that didn’t make sound, like marking boards, stacking them in order, writing out a tasklist in the right sequence, setting up blades and bits, and of course, using hand tools.

In a way, since my woodworking processes were very fractured, I didn’t mind the time it took to set up blades and fences. But sometimes, when my neighbor would leave to the gym, I’d only have 2 hours of shop time.

This meant that once I machined one stack of boards, I’d have to quickly re-set blade heights, fence distances, and router bits before the next batch of cuts. That was when I realized that tool set-up can take half of your shop time.

‘How could I make this faster?’, I thought, ‘Is there a way I can pre-set all of these beforehand?’ Well, not without having two table saws, or 3 router tables. Hmmmm…maybe that’d be worth it. Now, my current workshop design calls for at least a dual router table, and two bandsaws. For processes that are very common for you, this will repeatedly make you happy. I think that’s worth a few hundred bucks, right?

One more thing, very carefully re-think that cool-looking hide-away, flip-up planer cart with the scroll saw shelf. You’re just adding to your set-up time. I understand that limited room can drive you to saving floor space this way, but anything that you use often should have a dedicated station.

If you must use “transformer tools”, then design it so that your set-ups can stay intact when the tool is rotated or flipped out of the way, and you can make it fast. You don’t want to have to re-hook up dust hoses and change your settings every time you want to use it.

I really make sure that the table saw surface stays clean; otherwise I’m spending time clearing it off whenever I want to use a sled.

Horizontal Table Surfaces

Assuming you’ve taken care of your clutter-tendencies through smart storage design, you still need plenty of horizontal workspace. Workbenches for heavy-duty work, assembly tables to hold things up at the right height while you work on them, a shop cart by your side to temporarily hold stuff for you within arm’s reach, and giant outfeed and side-extensions all can help to keep your workflow uninterrupted.

Ever find yourself wondering where to put all of those just-cut pieces during a cutting operation? Make one! You ARE a woodworker; make something for yourself today.

One thing I’ve learned is that if I have horizontal work tables, they can get cluttered. But, if I have shelves under these tables, I can quickly clear them off. I also integrate easy-to-access storage for the exact items that tend to accumulate on each of those surfaces.

Independently Functional Workstations

I know, you’re hurting for room. Despite having a 3-car garage sized shop, even I wish I had an extra 10 foot wide space to ease up the walking paths a bit. But, dealing with what you have, and what individual workstations you can reasonably fit, strive to make them functionally independent.

What I mean by this is every time you have to leave the station to get something, flip a switch, or put something back, stop yourself there. Ask if this happens often. Could you buy another one of those things to keep right at the station? Maybe move it to a drawer at the bench permanently?

When designing your storage “strategery”, think about ALL the things you’ll often use at that station or tool zone, and put them as close to arm’s reach as possible, in order of desired accessiblity.

Open Floor and Walking Paths

I know, no space, right? Well, it feels even more cramped if you use your floor as a shelf. Same thing goes for how you’re routing your dust collection flex-hoses. Are they on the floor? If so, do you have to step over it? I like to suspend them from overhead to keep them out of the way. I don’t find that they interfere with carrying long boards around the shop.

I also keep floor space-hogs to a minimum, which is why I don’t have a clamp cart.

In one of my first posts, I noted how my layout preserves two decent-sized “open areas” in my shop. This is because I don’t know everything that’s gonna happen in my shop while planning the layout. What if you get a truckload of barn lumber like Vic Hubbard of TumbleWoodworks did? So plan some flexibility in yours.

WoodChip Tip: While drawing your layout, use a 24” diameter circle to represent you and the space you need to walk around the shop. Despite how it makes them feel, I tell my tools all the time “I need my space”.

WoodChip Tip right after a WoodChip Tip: Now that everything is on wheels, you can freely experiment with your shop layout to get it just right, test it for a few weeks, then adjust it again! As your working style evolves, you may want to do this every few years.

Besides the additional mobility these double-locking casters provide, they also give a bit of vibration isolation, dampening energy transfer between the motor and the floor. I typically add neoprene pads and rubber washers to further this effect.

Mobility

In the post Musical Machines, I describe how and why I make most of my stations mobile. Again, this goes back to flexibility mentioned above. If you don’t want your stations rolling aimlessly around the shop, don’t worry. They make double-locking casters for that; they lock both the wheels from spinning, and the entire caster from rotating. Still not convinced? You can always use the Rockler bench-casters that fold up entirely out of the way until you need them.

Oh, and don’t forget to allow enough slack on your dust collection flex hoses and power cords. You want to make sure you can move them in all directions at least a few feet so you can allow for infeed/ outfeed adjustments, as well as clearing some open space for large projects.

While my machines stay in the same position most of the time (after all, that’s why I so carefully designed a layout!), I want them to have the ability at a moment’s notice to move them.

WoodChip Tip: Another reason having everything mobile (on wheels) is that you’ll be more likely to do a major cleaning, since it’ll be pretty easy to move things to one side of the shop, clean the heck out of it, then rinse and repeat on the other side.

Take Notes in the Shop!

Thanks, Captain Obvious! Well, this is often forgotten during the excitement of being in the shop. But, if you experience a frustration or bottleneck in your workflow, at least write it down on a paper you keep in your pocket. When I’m at Starbucks working on my design, I can figure out a solution most of the time, and if that doesn’t work, I flip through the Rockler catalog to see if I can find something that’ll solve it.

A dry-erase board can be used to keep a tasklist so you know where you left off, and to put (maybe in a different color) shop improvement suggestions or problems to solve.

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

And, if you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow #woodchat every Wednesday night, at 6:00 pm, PST.

Gotta get more clamps,

Design the Bottlenecks Out of your Woodshop Workflow is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

How to Organize Your Thoughts on Woodshop Storage

Bobby — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:23:18 +0000

Small items are probably the most critical to round up and put in a container where you can find stuff. In this box, I even used a sealed bag to store some parts separate from others to reduce the amount I’d have to sift through.

There’s more to storage than plopping stuff on shelves in a particular order. If I have all of my oil finishes together doesn’t mean my shop flows well. Thinking more “big picture”, or strategically, about your shop storage will sync with the woodshop layout you worked so hard to get perfect.

After all, what good is ergonomically arranging all of your tools if you have to traipse across the shop just to get a marking gauge?

Take a minute here and let me comb your mind towards having the same consistent philosophy for workshop storage as you do your woodshop’s layout.

Once you have an overall philosophy (design principles), your woodshop design should come together much quicker because you’ll have a guide.

Categorize Your Stuff by Station, Not Just Function

If you think about it, most people’s instinct is to store their tools just by their function. All screwdrivers together, all chisels together, all measuring and marking stuff in one place, etc.

But, if you think about it some more, you use your tools at a workstation. If I’m at my assembly table, I want to be able to access anything I want while I’m there. I want to do the same thing while I’m at my workbench too.

But if all of my chisels are at the workbench, and I need to touch up an inside corner with a chisel while at the assembly table, I have to walk over to get it. Instead, I’d rather have at least one chisel dedicated to the assembly table.

So, my rule is to FIRST categorize tool needs by STATION, and only after that categorize them by function. In other words, at a given station, I’ll group like tools together, but I won’t do that for the overall shop because that runs counter to good workflow.

This may mean you’ll be duplicating some tools; three screwdrivers, several hammers, etc. But that’s a good thing. Really. I do that and it’s awesome.

Accessibility Level

You ever notice that you take out a tool, use it for the day, then feel obligated to “put it back” only to take it out again? So eventually you just leave it on your bench anyway. Ok, but that can get in the way if you always have a bunch of stuff on the bench. So, just change what “put it back” means. Make it easy.

Have a rare earth magnet hold some tools just underneath the bench on the legs (not the table edge), so it’s easy to clear the top rather than walk over to a “tool wall” (which I’m generally against, which I’ll discuss more below), or create a recessed tool well in your bench. Lower shelves below horizontal surfaces are a big help.

I don’t use this very often, so I keep it in a clear plastic box. That way I can see it’s there, and it’s protected from dust.

Things that you access every day or almost every day need different treatment than something you only use every 6 months. But you knew that. The idea here is to actually list them so you can design around it. You also don’t want to store rarely used items so out-of-sight that you forget you even have them.

My woodshop design calls for three levels of accessibility:

Use Every Day
Use Occasionally
Seldom Use (but still want it available)

Often-used items get the premium real estate. This means at a location from waist to eye level. Occasionally used things are put down lower. I like reaching high the least, so things that I don’t use much at all are put up higher if a station is against the wall. For tool stations located more in the middle of the shop, I may add drawers or shelves on the sides or “back” of the station.

WoodChip Tip: Don’t forget to protect what you store from dust. But not everything needs to be “hidden”. You can use clear plastic boxes, cabinets and even drawers with windows. Some things that are easy to brush off I simply keep out in the open for better accessibility. But things with a lot of complicated shapes that are hard to “de-dust” I protect in a drawer or a box of some sort.

Things like the useless plastic boxes a lot of tools come in get stored on high shelves in the house. Are there things in your shop that really don’t need to be there? Perhaps you could build something to contain all those garden tools...

What to Carry With You

There are a few (very few) items that I use at almost all workstations, and they happen to be light enough that I can put them on my regular pants belt. I reach for those when I enter the shop, so they’re mounted on the wall next to the door so they’re easy to grab.

These include:

Dust Collector Remote
Marking knife or pencil (for me, a mechanical pencil)
Measuring device (for me, a tape measure and small ruler)
Safety Glasses and Ear Protection
Small clip-on pouch for misc. stuff like screws or plugs

Drilling a small hole in the arms of your safety glasses and threading a cord through it will help keep you from searching for them every 10 minutes. A pocket would work too, especially if you have a shop apron.

Some people like having a shop apron, others maybe a tool belt. I just adhered a belt clip to the pouch and a keychain to the remote and it works well. My safety glasses and hearing protection have a cord on them so they can go around my neck when I’m not using them.

If you find that you use something constantly, consider keeping it on you, and design a way to conveniently carry it.

Shop Cart Storage

If something is too bulky or heavy to carry around, you could store it at a shop cart. A shop cart is a good way of transporting stock from one machine to the next, where you sort wood on its way into the machine from wood that was just machined. Things like a speed square, engineer’s square, some chalk, or a small block or shoulder plane would be helpful to have at the ready as you’re running boards through several tools.

But be careful that you plan your shop cart with a purpose. Don’t just add a bunch of shelves to store miscellaneous items just because you can. Make sure the shop cart serves a focused function and that’s it.

Lumber Scraps

An often forgotten system you should have is a way to deal with offcuts and scraps at stations that generate them. If you just throw them on the floor you have a big mess to clean up, and now you have to sort between trash and treasure.

If you have a dual bin, one for trash and one for “keep”, you can throw them in the right bin as you go. Your shop will tend to stay cleaner since it’ll be easy.

I suggest you have these bins at the bandsaw, table saw, and miter saw.

What I Do in My House

Part of the reason for this post is I’ve recently completed an overhaul of my house storage. I caulked, sealed, and painted all of my closets. I even replaced several shelves with solid wood ones, because the builder-cheap MDF ones were sagging.

That got me really thinking about my overall strategy for storing stuff. My goals were:

To make cleaning up fast at any time
To create a tendency to keep the house clutter-free
To make things easy to find, especially often-used things
To get stuff out of sight that I didn’t use very often

Simply put, if you pile your mail on a table every day, but sorting and putting billing statements and other records away is difficult, you’ll tend to leave them there until it looks really crappy.

I can literally pack for an outdoors trip in a half hour; none of my gear is scattered around the house—it’s all here.

Things that are inconvenient to clean up will tend to stay messy. So I made all places I need to continually access at an easy-to-reach level, free of interference of other boxes.

If someone comes over to visit, I can clear table and counter surfaces of clutter in less than 20-30 minutes without dumping it all into an empty room and closing the door. Everything has a designated place now.

WoodChip Tip: Don’t micro-sort everything. Instead, macro-sort. If you attempt to put every little thing in alphabetical order, or try any other obsessive-compulsive system, you won’t finish your systems. Just get things that belong together stored together where they’re needed. There’s nothing wrong with a box of wrenches; as long as you know where they are and they’re located at the station where you need them. You don’t need to put them in size-order and have a cut-out space for each. If you must, do all the “micro-sorting” after all of your “macro-sorting” is done throughout the shop.

Now, if I need to find my camping gear, there are 4 clear plastic boxes with labels on them to look through, all next to each other. This is way better than one giant box, with some of the gear in other closets.

You may collect these from various trade shows or your suppliers. But do you use them? I have these in my art/ design studio. During a design, I flip through these to see what my options are.

Small Shops

I’m no stranger to small shops. I did woodworking from my apartment bedroom for a few years, had a 1-car garage bay in a house for 2 years, then an apartment 1-car garage bay (with a neighbor overhead!) for a few more years. Now I have a 3-car garage shop, which is about the right size space for me.

How did I deal with that limited space and still try to stick to the woodshop design principals I encourage here on this blog? What if you have to share your space with your wife’s car, a bunch of “misc.” storage?

I discovered there are only 4 main objectives you should focus on:

Get non-workshop items out of shop if possible, and at least off the floor as out of the way as possible
Protect what must be stored in the shop area from dust
Each station must be mobile; locking casters are ideal here
Absolutely minimize how much set-up and “transforming” you have to do to each station (i.e. minimize 6-in-1 workstations)

Like everything, the above is easier said than done, but you can go pretty far.

Household stuff stored in the garage or basement is usually “long-term” storage, and doesn’t need to be accessed very often. If that’s the case, create out-of-reach shelves for clear plastic boxes, high cabinets, or loft space.

The one thing that limited space does is reduce the amount of horizontal table area. So, you wind up putting stuff on your table saw, router table, etc. I was constantly clearing off the table saw to make a cut. I used a lot more hand tools back then because I didn’t have room for a jointer.

If you have old baby furniture or toys in the garage, think about building an insulated shed in the yard, or adding some built-in storage inside the house. For quite awhile, I was storing all my plastic power tool cases in the shop; recently I added storage space inside my house and put them there. Now my shop has much more wiggle room. Also, until I build a garden shed, I put all the garden tools on one wall out of the workflow.

While it is tempting to engineer a complicated shop station with a rotating planer, flip-up spindle-sander, and router table extension, it just adds to your set-up time and becomes a deterrent to starting a project. I found that if I added up the time to extract tools from their hiding spot and set them up to use, it took over half of my shop time.

In my one-car garage shops I had a dedicated router table and a dedicated table-saw station, both on wheels. My workbench was plywood on saw horses. Along one wall, I just put each station there and rolled it out to use it, but I didn’t have to do anything else to get it ready.

Avoid These

This one is pretty simple. Just don’t do the following:

Planer cart with 6 different shelves and drawers filled with things you don’t need for planing operations.
Tool-walls far from your bench
Wall-mounted tool cabinets far from your bench or assembly table
Putting stuff in places that you have to take out again the next day
Having to walk across the shop for something more than a few times
Centralized storage (except for reserve supplies)
Storage of all jigs in one place
“Universal” cabinets to store all the shop’s loose stuff
Clamp racks away from the bench or assembly table just because it’s easier to hang on the wall far away
Allow storage of unrelated items at workstations

When I had a 1-car garage shop, distances to walk around were very short. Still, I didn’t like walking around the table saw or router table to get stuff that should’ve been where I was. So if you must have a wall-mounted tool cabinet, or a “tool wall”, make sure it’s right at your assembly table or workbench so everything is within easy reach. Because my workbench surface is away from walls (I like to walk on all sides), I don’t have a tool cabinet on the wall.

At my Table Saw station, I store as much as I can within reach. I find that rare-earth magnets work great for putting things away and keeping things highly accessible, even with one hand.

Currently, my assembly table is against the wall so my clamps are on the wall next to that. But my assembly table design has room for clamps underneath the table, reachable by one hand (assuming the other hand is desperately holding something together).

If I store things on the wall, they’re seldom-used items like long T-squares, plywood carry-handles, etc. I also have a magnetic strip near my shop entrance to my house where I put commonly used tools for around the house, such as a few mini-clamps, screwdrivers, and one chisel. This way I can just open the door, reach around and take what I need and go back inside.

If you just remember to decentralize your woodshop storage, you’ll find yourself achieving your designed workflow most of the time.

You can mount one of these almost anywhere. This one is right inside the entry door to the shop, so I can easily access things I commonly use around the house.

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

Gotta get more clamps,

How to Organize Your Thoughts on Woodshop Storage is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

There’s Nothing Wrong with What You Bought 5 Years Ago

Bobby — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 20:40:04 +0000

This benchtop oscillating spindle sander/ belt sander is very versatile. In fact, I’ve always wanted a floor-standing belt/ disc sander but I really don’t need one because this just takes care of all those functions. So, I might as well allocate those funds to something more urgent.

If you have something that works well for you, but you see they have a new gizmo out, what do you do with the old one? Could you have spent the money to gain a new capability you didn’t have before?

I like to stay with what’s already working for me, unless it will revolutionize the way I do things. Now, there are things that need an upgrade that aren’t working well for me, but if I’m fine with what I have, then I can allocate those resources elsewhere.

I find that most of the “new and improved” versions of things will only marginally save you time or improve the quality of your work. The way I see woodworking is I’m manifesting what I envision into an object. The tools I use get me there with varying degrees of accuracy or closeness to what I had in mind. If I have a major deficiency in an area like making curved cuts the way I want them, I would rather solve that than buy a slightly better tool I have already.

Dovetail Jigs

I’ve tried hand-cutting dovetails, and if I put the time in I can certainly do it. Some people just enjoy the process so that’s what they do. If I want 6 dovetailed drawers, I’m after the look. If I cut them by hand, I’d be doing a repetitive process for many hours, and that doesn’t make me very happy.

So I figured out I needed a way to cut good-looking dovetails in a variety of shapes and configurations. After doing my research (around 8 years ago), I decided to get the Jointech system. It had the best engineered mechanism, it was easy enough to learn (mine came with a video, and I saw the demo at The Woodworking Shows), and it was accurate. But the biggest selling point for me was its versatility; it could cut many different types of dovetails, even inlaid ones, without compromising the tool’s performance on any one of those tasks.

The Jointech system works really well for me so I never bother to explore other jigs and systems for creating dovetail joints.

I paid around $500 for the router table fence system and all the accessories I wanted. It continues to serve me well today, and it does everything I want. Plus I’m very used to how it works.

Every few weeks I get the tool ads in the mail with the latest and greatest dovetail jigs. Now the number of choices is just ridiculous from the Porter Cable models, to the Leigh, to the Veritas. I look at them of course, but I immediately dismiss the thought of buying one because the one I have works well. Sorry, tool companies…

This saves me quite a bit of time not paying attention to so many things.

Tools

I never really understood peoples’ desire to keep buying the same tool over and over again just because it has one extra feature, or it just got rated “Super Woodworking Magazine Winner!”.

For example, I have a DeWalt jigsaw. It’s ok at what it does; though it could use a better blade guide. The Bosch version they make today is what I would’ve bought 7 years ago.

But seriously, I’m not going to spend a few hundred bucks just to make this upgrade. When the DeWalt one gets busted or wears out then I’ll seek out the best one available to replace it.

Now the chisels I have aren’t exactly what you’d call fine woodworking chisels. They’re from a discount bin to begin with, and they get used for “demo” work, and yes, sometimes to pry stuff apart. That somewhat sharp edge just fits so perfectly between things that need prying.

Needless to say, on my Buy List is a good set of chisels.

I’ll do my research, float around some forums, see what works for people, and which ones are best at what tasks.

But once I buy them, I can safely ignore the chisel ads again, unless I spot something that represents a good leap in either time savings or quality of work.

I’m always looking to upgrade my existing tools, if it provides me with a better quality of cut or something worthwhile like a time savings. My current jointer, an 8″ Delta X5, is extremely easy to maintain and very trouble-free. I added a link belt, lined the cabinet with some sound-absorbent insulation, and used rubber washers on the cabinet assembly to improve the sound attenuation I wanted. But now I’m thinking of upgrading the cutterhead to a helix-style with small carbide inserts. If this improves the cut, and makes it easier to remove nicks that appear in the blade by simply rotating one of the inserts, then it would be a big enough reason to do the upgrade, since it’ll both save time of removing ridges in the stock and blade changes, and also improve the quality of what I do.

I totally love my 8” Delta X5 Jointer. I just use it and sort of take for granted that it’s dead accurate every time, and I have zero problems with it. I’ve already added a link belt to cut vibration, a mobile base, lined the cabinet with sound-absorbing specialty insulation panels, and my next upgrade may be a spiral cutterhead with replaceable carbide insert blades.

An upgrade to my sharpening method (currently using a granite plate with adhesive-backed sandpaper all the way to 3500 grit and a leather strop) to a slow-speed sharpening machine is under consideration. I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing now, but if this machine, even at a cost of several hundred dollars, can save me time and achieve the same results, may be worth it. I bet it would encourage more hand tool use too, which is often faster than setting up a power tool to do a quick job.

Specialty Tools

I always make room for specialty items that fill a void in what I already have. Sometimes buying a specialty tool for things you do a lot is totally worth it in time savings, as well as a focused quality; an example of this is a pocket hole machine with a router motor and pivoting bit to machine the pockets. For me, though, I’m good with the manual jig where you use a drill in a metal guide-sleeve to drill out the pocket.

I do a lot of glue-ups that exceed the width of my planer. Rather than glue up 12” sections, plane and joint them flat before gluing them together, then using handplanes and a belt sander to flatten the panel, I just run them through the drum sander. A true time-saving tool well worth the money.

Now, in your woodshop design, I think you should think about some specialty processes you do all the time. Perhaps you make dovetails non-stop, and would like to do them by machine. Then maybe a dovetail machine commonly used in cabinet shops is for you. Insert a lot of Blum hinges? There are machines for that. Make a lot of repetitive holes? Maybe a Line Boring Machine needs a spot in your layout. Why settle for the standard list of shop tools? Never settle.

How I Figure Out What to Buy

Besides the occasional impulse buy that makes me happy, I have a bit of a system in my head that makes it easy to pass up all those ads, and still gets me the tools I really need and benefit from.

I simply focus on R.O.I., or Return On Investment.

Three Things:

Accuracy/ Quality of my Work
Time Saved
Less headaches

If what I currently have kind of sucks, then I’ll look at the tool reviews for its replacement. If what I have is good but could be upgraded, I’ll either invent a jig to correct it or look for one at a place like Rockler.

If what I have works well, then I leave well enough alone. Only when a revolutionary version of what I have comes out will I consider replacing the existing.

WoodChip Tip: By the way, I rarely sell the old tool. It becomes a reserve if the other one should break, or a second tool with a different blade or setting.

Also, use what you’ve got until you can afford to buy, and if something will pay you back in $ earned, then give yourself permission to make the investment. But don’t go into debt to do it.

Most people buy as they can afford, but based on what they feel they want. By designing your workshop ahead of time, you’ll know what you need. That’s a significant difference in mindset, and really helpful when I’m shopping online or at Rockler. I still buy plenty of things, but they’re more targeted to benefit me daily.

In my Woodshop Design Outline (which I’d be glad to email to you, just see the form below this post), I list all the design categories of my shop, including all the tool categories. Under each category, list all the tools you both have and want. I usually put the ones I don’t have yet in a different font or italics, then I put a “1”, “2”, “3”, etc. to prioritize my purchases. For example, I might want a bandsaw before a miter saw, because I can use a circular saw and a jig or a table saw for crosscutting, but a bandsaw would correct the rough curved cuts that a jigsaw makes.

Just like you would write a budget or bill of materials, do the same for your future shop inventory, all as part of your workshop design. Let me know if I can be of help!

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

Gotta get more clamps,

There’s Nothing Wrong with What You Bought 5 Years Ago is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

The Top Ten Things You Can Do To Whip Your Shop into Shape

Bobby — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:22:34 +0000

Past shop experience without a dust collector taught me that productivity suffers greatly when you’re breathing clouds of dust. So, because the payback is continuous, I took the time to design and install a full dust collection system so I could go about building the rest of the shop.

To build your dream shop, you kind of need a functional shop first. That’s what trips a lot of people up; they don’t know where to start with their existing shop. I solved that problem by creating a highly functional “temporary” shop that many would consider their permanent shop. That’s what I’m using now to create all the things I need to realize my design.

Operating in a cluttered shop with no walking space, tools and parts in haphazard locations and uninsulated walls will only delay your shop renovation.

Below are the top ten things I did or am doing to whip my shop into shape while I’m constructing my ideal design step by step.

10. Don’t Buy Things That Solve a One-Time Problem

While perusing the woodworking catalogs, it is tempting to buy a bunch of things that you’ll use to solve a problem that rarely occurs. I dog-ear dozens of pages in magazines and catalogs, but I generally buy things that will have a frequent pay-back. You have limited resources, so it’s necessary to prioritize what you buy. If I spend all of my monthly budget on random supplies, there’s none left over to buy stuff I’ll benefit from like insulation, lights, electrical wiring, circuit breakers, dust collection ductwork, wood to make my bench and assembly table, etc.

As part of my design, I’ve listed what I want to buy to stock my future shop and put all of that in a certain order. But there are things in there that I can use now to help fabricate parts of my shop, so I added those to my Buy List. These include pneumatic sheet metal shears, hole saws, Forstner bits, an electric back-up drill, handheld power planer, pneumatic staple gun, some measuring and marking devices, a bunch of extra clamps, and a more complete set of hardware.

9. Keep Your Aisles Clear

It doesn’t cost anything to create a clutter-free shop. In fact, having your walkways clear will help you identify what your layout should look like. You’ll start to get a feel for what paths would be the most convenient for how you typically like to work.

A few ways to keep the floor clear is to first have a home for everything, even if it’s a temporary clear plastic storage box, and then set up some additional horizontal table surfaces. I use sawhorses to support a temporary bench and assembly table to use while I finish my “ideal” one.

WoodChip Tip: Use clear boxes to store stuff, so you don’t have to keep opening lids to see what’s inside. For hardware, I like to use a hot glue gun and stick a sample of what’s inside to the outside of the box. I also bought one of those handheld labelers and labeled the heck out of everything. Now, it takes around 20 minutes to clean up.

Until I “officially” design all the storage to be integrated into each station, I use clear plastic boxes and put typed labels on them. This way, I can clean up fast, and I know where everything is.

8. Clear Your Horizontal Surfaces, and Create a Permanent Place for That Stuff

This dovetails with #9. Once you have your horizontal surface tables set up, don’t use them for permanent storage unless you have a shelf below the table. The whole point of the top surface is to give you a place to stage your projects, assemble parts and subassemblies, and to do hand work. This is why you see many bench designs with a shelf underneath, and sometimes a recessed tool tray to encourage a clutter-free top. You’re not gonna want to start working in your shop if you always have a mountain of stuff on each table and tool surface.

7. Put a “Buy List” in Your Pocket

I have a lot of stuff on my keychain, in my pockets, and on my belt. I just like to have things within reach. But if forced to minimize what I keep with me, one of the things would be a “Buy List”. I write what I need at any given moment so I don’t forget when I happen to be at a store.

If I’m at Rockler or Lowes, I just refer to this list and pick up the things I need most. It’s just too easy to have a frustration in the shop and then forget about it when you leave for lunch only to re-experience it again another day.

As a companion to this, you can also mount a small whiteboard and use a dry-erase marker to note things you’d like to incorporate in your design.

Often the simplest things work best, and pay you high dividends. This Buy List is always with me, and if I happen to be at a Rockler or Lowes, then I don’t have to stress over what I “might” need.

6. Deal with the Most Offending Wall or Roof First

My order of attack to increase comfort is:

Install radiant barrier flex panels between each truss bay at the roof.
Install radiant barrier foam panels between the studs on the East, South, and West walls, and completely seal each stud bay.
Drill soffit vent holes and cover with a tight screen to keep out brush fire embers, and increase the gable vent opening to more than double the code requirements for attic ventilation. This will help convectively cool your roof sheathing using the fact that hot air rises to let it out of the shop attic space. For free.
Install fabric-covered foam panels on my metal roll-up garage door, which faces West. I have a foil backing facing the door, with a 1″ air gap. The light weight of the foam panels is no problem for the garage door opener motor.
Install insulation to fill up the wall stud bays completely with rigid foam, with a minimum R-value of R-25.
Install a ceiling below the roof, and make it totally air tight. I’ll have a sealed attic access, and insulation above the ceiling. This ceiling is my “envelope” at the top of the shop. The roof itself serves only to keep out rain and to reflect solar radiation via the radiant barriers. The attic ventilation will serve to keep the attic temperature as close to the same as the outside as possible. It’s the inside of my shop that I want at a comfortable 72 deg. or so. According to Building Science.com, this is the most cost effective roof system, even though they seem to favor sprayfoam insulation right at the rafters.

I’ve found that I’m highly prolific when I’m comfortable, and very lazy when I’m hot or cold. Knowing this, I set up my environment to naturally encourage stuff to get done.

The hot roof sheathing was the biggest offender for radiating heat into the shop and making it unoccupiable. So, this was the top priority this summer. If there’s something preventing you from being in the shop, that should be absolutely your only project until it is done.

5. Build Yourself a Shop Cart

I haven’t done this yet, but it’s high on the list. This will complete the usefulness of your Work Clusters. I’ll be using it to plop infeed stock yet to be machined and have a separate spot on the cart to stash the outfeed stock. Then wheel it all to the next station.

4. Don’t Forget Some Creature Comforts

I can’t live without my radio. By having that background of talk radio or my MP3’s, I tend to stay in the shop longer and get more done. Otherwise, I’d gravitate toward the TV in the house. I have a TV in the shop too, but I find that I don’t watch it much because I have to keep my eyes on what I’m doing.

One thing I’m putting in my design is a loft sitting area. I have a very tall attic, so I might as well take advantage of the space. And having a place to sit and rest IN your shop is better than going inside your house and plopping on the couch for hours.

One of the first things I do when I enter the shop is turn on the radio or play some MP3’s.

3. Install at Least a Temporary Dust Collection System

Not sure what your ideal Dust Collection duct routing needs to be? No worries, just run some flex hose to your machines. You can use quick-connect fittings so you can change which machines are hooked up. But, try to get your ideal layout settled as soon as you can so you can install the permanent system. This is one thing you want to automate.

I’ve got mine pretty much done, and I take for granted how much more I enjoy not sneezing or blowing my nose every 10 minutes.

2. Get Non-Woodshop Stuff Out of the Workflow

There are some gardening tools inside my garage shop, but they’re all on one wall, and off the floor. My plans call for a separate locking shed in the side yard, but until then I’ve minimized their impact on the workshop.

The same goes for “site construction tools”, like tool belts, concrete cutting tools, drywall tools, electrical and plumbing tools, etc. I’ve put these in isolated corners that are totally out of the work paths.

I’d also recommend training your car to be an outdoor creature. Mine is, and I love having the dedicated space. Having to wheel stuff around just to start a shop session is a deterrent to going out to the woodshop in the first place, which is costing you shop time and enjoyment.

To make for a comfortable shop time, all the non-woodshop stuff, if it needs to be in there to begin with, should be out of the workflow.

1. Create Tool Clusters to Start Experimenting With Your Ideal Layout

I’ve done this already. You can’t rely solely on your paper design to come up with an ideal shop layout that flows. You have to walk it and go through the motions. I’ve changed mine several times as a result of trying out various configurations.

Once I’ve settled on the arrangement, I began to route the dust collection duct and come up with a circuit plan to get the electrical set up. Now, I have 80% of my dust collection ducts where I want them, and my outlets are done. Effectively, I have a very functional shop to use to elevate it to the next level.

Of course, I add to my design all the deficiencies I experience in the shop. My hope is to capture all this before I finish construction. But even if I don’t, there’s always the opportunity to begin designing Woodshop 3.0.

As I was perfecting the layout that felt most comfortable for me, I benefitted from things being in the right place. If I take a year to design the shop but don’t implement anything, then I lose out on that year of comfort, and it’ll take me longer to build the design in the first place.

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

Gotta get more clamps,

The Top Ten Things You Can Do To Whip Your Shop into Shape is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

The 3-Step System for NEVER Running Out of Shop Supplies

Bobby — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:44:12 +0000

After I had a battery fail on my cordless drill, I got a corded one to handle heavy tasks and for a backup.

Not too many things are more frustrating than running out of supplies in the middle of a project.

Think about the interruption in workflow it causes. It sucks to stop what you’re doing, jump in the car and pick up supplies to continue building. Once you get out of the groove of being in the shop, there’s a good chance that with all of life’s distractions you won’t.

What if you ran out of something and suddenly a magic owl swooped down and dropped you some more fasteners or foam brushes?

There are so many things to run out of, it’s often difficult to keep track precisely enough to guarantee it never happens. Anything from sandpaper, fasteners, jigsaw blades, foam brushes, acid brushes, masking tape, to biscuits or Dominoes can be a huge time waster to suddenly find yourself on empty.

So what to do about it? Set up shop in the Rockler parking lot? Hmmmm…

What I Do

My solution actually started in my apartment just after college. Being kind of lazy about running errands all the time, I’d keep a “reserve” stash of various supplies like paper towels, cotton face-cleaning pads, and other things that don’t expire. This Reserve Supply was not touched unless I run out of the regular supply. If I was low on something and happened to be at the store, I replenished the regular supply and left the reserve alone.

The Reserve Supply system simply assures that I’m never stuck with zero supply of things at a bad time.

The end result is your reserve supply bridges the gap between regular supply replenishment so that you keep your workflow going and momentum. To me, this is part of the workflow system in my workshop design. To spend all that time on your shop layout to have yourself interrupted all the time kind of defeats the purpose I think.

This has saved me so many times I don’t know how many exactly. When I tap into my reserve supply, I’m well aware of it (for fear I won’t have any for the next time) and so when I find myself out shopping I make sure to refill what I used in the reserve, along with the regular supply. I normally don’t have to do this for more than a few woodshop products at a time, so remembering is not a problem. Also, you won’t mind waiting for supplies if you order online, which can save you time as well. You should be thinking of phasing your suppliers into the online realm, and use this Reserve System to eliminate the issue of shipping time.

In the middle of assembly, the last thing I want to do is run out of screws. By having these as a reserve stash, I know that I don’t have to stop working and go shopping at an awkward time.

Sanding discs are things that I forget to replenish all the time. But the minute I dig into my reserve supply, it makes me nervous enough to make sure I buy more to restock.

Another benefit is that this system saves start-up time associated with going in an individual errand. By having a Reserve Supply to bridge the gap, you can batch some errands together. For example, if I run out of square drive deck screws, I can dip into the reserve until I find myself out and about anyway. I just add the item I ran out of to my Buy List, and keep building. For more tips on making more shop time for yourself, read Time Focus for Woodworkers: How to Allocate Your Energy.

Below are a few tips I’ve learned but once you agree with yourself to do it, it’ll just become habit. And I guarantee you’ll be happy you did.

Supplies Where a Reserve is a Must

I’ve gravitated toward keeping a reserve of consumables that don’t expire. That way I don’t have to remember much, except that the reserve is there as my back-up.

WoodChip Tip: Use plastic Ziploc bags to store your Reserve Supplies, and just label them with a permanent marker.

Below is a list of things that I currently keep in my secret stash:

Sandpaper in Various Grits

Random Orbit Discs in each grit.
Belt Sander belts, one for the 3”x21” and a few for the 2.5”x14” Porter Cable compact belt sander.

Blades

Jigsaw blades, one course, one metal, and one fine wood cutting.
A combination Table Saw blade that isn’t used anymore due to replacement with a better quality blade, but I keep for back-up.
Extra card scraper, pre-sharpened.
Angle grinder disc.

Bits

Bit drivers, two square drive and two Phillips, of various sizes.
A few skinny drill bits, because I break them a lot.

Tool-Specific Parts

Extra SawStop brake cartridges, one for the normal blade and one for the dado stack.
Extra Shop Vac filter.
Air Cleaner filter.
Light Bulbs.
Fuel Cells for pneumatics.

Finishing Supplies

Foam brushes.
Staining rags.

Assembly Supplies

Acid brushes.
Pneumatic staples and brads.
Screws I most commonly use.
Glue (rotate this to avoid staleness).
Biscuits.
A few dowels.
A small board of pre-cut 3/8″ plugs.

Marking

Pencil lead for my mechanical pencil.
Chalk for labeling parts.

Hardware

Commonly used hinges, pulls, and knobs.

Lumber

Repeatedly needed species and board sizes.

Now that I’ve taken the time to create reserves of most consumable supplies I use, I don’t have to really worry about running out if I forget to replenish the regular supply. These simply remain normally untouched in these bags until I really need them.

Some things aren’t necessary to keep a reserve in addition to a regular supply, like a Shop Vac filter, but at least make sure you have a spare. If you don’t, just add it to your “Buy List”. You have that in your pocket, right?

I even bought an emergency back-up light. Plus, I have my lighting on 2 circuits. I love backing up everything I can, as you can tell.

Some Reserves Must be Rotated

There are some supplies that expire, but you still don’t want to run out of. Glue is one, finishing materials have a shelf-life, and so do sealants and paint.

So, to keep a reserve of these, I recommend putting those together in a highly visible place, and mark the date with a permanent marker. Every so often just rotate your Reserve Supply with your regular supply to keep it fresh.

You can do this for lumber as well if you know you use certain species and board sizes all the time.

Location

I just keep these supplies all together in one cabinet near the assembly table, since most of these consumables are assembly-related. By keeping them in one place you can check on them all at once. A much easier system and eliminates a lot of thinking and attention.

Now Go Do It Before You Forget

The 3 Steps really are this:

Grab some sandwich bags, and a marker.
Go to each workshop station and “tax” your supplies to use as a Reserve System. List the items to buy to complete your system. You should have a “Buy List” in your back pocket all the time, so when you’re driving around you know what you need.
Put these supplies all together in one location.

For more guidance in assembling your Woodshop Design, click on the Starting? Go Here! category and read those first.

Connect with me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for more ninja tips to Optimize Your Woodshop!

Gotta get more clamps,

The 3-Step System for NEVER Running Out of Shop Supplies is a post from: The Art of Woodshop Design

The Art of Woodshop Design

My New Dust Collection Filter Bags Arrived!

My Old Crap

Goals to Aim For

Unpacking the New Bag Filter

Installing the Filter Bag

Measuring the New Airflow

CFM vs. Static Pressure

Another Opporunity

What Goals I’ve Achieved with the New Bag Filter

What Improvements Are Next

Related Articles:

Dust Collection Mastery

Does your Dust Collector Filter Bag Spray Fine Dust Up Your Nose?

Does your Dust Collector Filter Bag Spray Fine Dust Up Your Nose?

Not Just an Automatic Broom

What’s Wrong

Designing Dust Extraction with More Than Filtration in Mind

Filter Types and Dust Collector Types

Exhausting Outside vs. Inside

Protecting Your Filters From Excessive Dust Loading

What You Need to Know About Pressure Losses

An Important Note About Filter Certification

Filter Bags

Cartridge Filters

A Blurb About Air Cleaners

Remember This

Related Article: Dust Collection Mastery

Garage Shop Convenience Outside!

At Your Service

Lighting

Water

Electrical

Create an Air-Sealed Envelope for Your Workshop

Landscape

Roof

Think About Rainy Days

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part II

Sound Escape Control

Create an Air-Sealed Envelope

Appliances in the Shop

Carefully Design Your Wall and Ceiling Layers

Lower Frequencies and Vibration

Garage Roll-Up Doors

Mid-Range and High Frequencies

Extra Credit

Sound Reverberation (Your Own Sanity)

Are These Things a Part of Your Design?

How I’m Soundproofing My Shop Part I

Simplify the Approach

Sound Source Control

Higher & Mid-Range Frequencies

Lower Frequencies and Vibration

Basically, Do These Things

Design the Bottlenecks Out of your Woodshop Workflow

One Word: Strategery

Automate Your Dust Collection

Designate Areas for ‘Out of Workflow’ Stuff

Identify Repeat Processes, Design Your Layout Around Those

Label and Color-Code Stuff

How to Keep Your Shop Tidy, Naturally

Tool Set-Up Slowdowns

Horizontal Table Surfaces

Independently Functional Workstations

Open Floor and Walking Paths

Mobility

Take Notes in the Shop!

How to Organize Your Thoughts on Woodshop Storage

Categorize Your Stuff by Station, Not Just Function

Accessibility Level

What to Carry With You

Shop Cart Storage

Lumber Scraps

What I Do in My House

Small Shops

Avoid These

There’s Nothing Wrong with What You Bought 5 Years Ago

Dovetail Jigs

Tools

Specialty Tools