Report - the shower curtain thingy...
Mike Schwing from Md.
>Last week I posted about my wife's suggestion that instead of hanging tarps to keep dust and shavings in the lathe area I set them up like shower curtains.
I did so on Saturday, after shopping at Lowe's on Saturday.
I purchased lengths of 1/2" emt piping (electrical conduit) for under $1.50/10 feet, a few bags of shower curtain hangers - the cheap metal kind, and a couple of different hooks to support the conduit. I also bought a 100' roll of 10' wide 4mm clear plastic sheeting for about $12.
After fashioning a means of securing the rods to the wall, I simply laid out a strip of duct tape across both sides of one of the long edges of a pre-measured length of sheeting, for reinforcement. I then cut holes for the curtain hangers, and hung them up. I immediately noticed that they needed weighting down, so being a fisherman I had plenty of various sized lead to attach to the bottoms.
IT WORKS WONDERFULLY! Easy as a breeze to open and close, stays out of the way when not needed, and has an added benefit of holding on to dust in the air due to static electricity. I simply took the shop vac and brushed them clean when done. Shavings stay where I want them and not all over the room, and my shop vac air cleaner did a great job of keeping the most of the dust from staying suspended in the lathe area.
Viola! Instant enclosure, will be very useful, very inexpensive to fashion, works great.
That was one part of Saturday morning. The other part was spent building a ballast box for underneath the 3520a. Not that it needed it, but I added another 350 pounds, so she now tops out at an even 1000. Baby's not going anywhere.