1) The outdoors is the best sawdust collector
If you only work with wood now and then, choose a nice day—then sand, saw, and rout outside. A folding work station offers a great outdoor bench, with no need to sweep up when you’re done.
2) Your health needs protection
Unless you’ve got an effective dust collector protecting your lungs, wear a dust mask, especially when sanding. This applies even if you’re working outside, and is especially important if you’re sanding cedar or pressure-treated lumber: repeated exposure to some wood dust can trigger permanent allergic sensitivities.
3) A shop vacuum needs to be big
When you’re using a table saw or chop saw in your workspace, you’ll get decent dust collection with a wet/dry vacuum connected to the dust port, but I find the vac needs to draw at least 12 amps of current to work well. Moving lots of air is key to effective dust collection. Small vacuums don’t cut it.
4) Dust collectors are amazing
For about $500 (same as a big shop vacuum), you can get a 1 or 1½ HP woodworking dust collector that’ll gobble up sawdust and shavings from a table saw, jointer, or planer. These units move many times more air than even the largest wet/dry vacuum and work surprisingly well.
5) Sawdust and shavings are useful
Got an outhouse? Throw a handful of fresh, dry shavings down the hole after each use to help balance the carbon/nitrogen ratio and reduce odours. Sawdust and shavings work well as garden mulch too. Even cedar is good for this, but black walnut and pressure-treated sawdusts aren’t. Bag them up and trash them, since both contain compounds that inhibit plant growth.
This article was originally published in the June/July 2024 issue.
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