Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Carole in VA

>I vac the lathe and all tools then wipe with a paper towel that has been spritzed very lightly with WD40. Use a broom and giant dustpan to shovel shavings into a big trash can which is them emptied in the woods behind the shop. (May have to change that because before long I will have a Mt. Everest of shavings back there!) After the broom, I vac. Have not had the experience yet of turning wood so green I needed a raincoat, but I know that's coming eventually.

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

JL

>I use the shop vac and the "Rags in a box" wipes.

On the rare occasions when I do turn green wood - well I work for a company that makes film. Consquently we occasionally have rolls that are defective and aren't worth recycling. Hey, it's free. That and duct tape work wonders.

Cleaning tools - wipes with water, then WD-40. Wax - my tools rarely see them except for my planes.

I also use a shop vac.

The best arrangement I ever saw was a very powerful cyclone that dumped into an outbuilding. It was powerful enough to suck up chunks of wood (small children, dogs, cats, etc.). If any shavings escaped it, you just opened the floor sweep and brushed the shavings in that direction. I'll bet it was about 5 hp, possibly more. Of course, it wasn't residential.

Delegate it to the kids

John Trant (Baltimore/DC area)

>I just wait until the weekend. Sweeping and vacuuming the shop is one of the regular weekly chores for my two kids. Along with daily chores of collecting the household trash, feeding the pets, cleaning their room, and loading/unloading the dishwasher, they almost earn their allowance. ;-)

I think this spring may be the perfect time to show the oldest how to cut the grass.

John

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Glenn Madsen

>Throw in the vegetable peelings and the lawn clippings, and you've got a compost pile. Start a new one each spring.

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Sam Dean

>Wow, I really feel like a slob here because I don't do any of that stuff. I never wipe the tools down with anything because they all get used often enough to avoid corrosion. I think I spray some WD 40 on the lathe about twice a year and wipe it off with a rag, but that's about it. I'll let the shavings pile up until I have a full truck load (or more), then scoop them up with a snow shovel and take them to a burn pile in the field. The off cuts from making bowl blanks will pile around the bandsaw until the pile is level with the table, then it's off to my neighbors house (she uses them for fire wood). I think I supplied about half the wood she heated with last winter. The only upgrades I've been thinking about are a material handling fan to dump the shavings into a trailer behind the shop, and maybe a heavy duty dump cart to handle the off cuts. When I get my "real" shop finished this summer (30x50), I'm planning on the cyclone in an out building kind of set up. May have to set up a conveyor to dump the shavings further out into the woods as well.

Sam

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

John Lucas

>David

I guess I'm a clean nut. I do wipe down the bed of the lathe with WD-40 if necessary, after turning Oak etc. With wax occasionally for other woods. I will at least shovel up the shaving each night before I close the shop.

My problems is disposing of the shavings. I don't have a place to dump them in the yard. The garbage men won't take them if they know they are wood shavings. The garbage men won't take a bag of shavings if they weigh over 45 lbs (properly disquised in a black bag of course. I can haul them to the dump but it's about 12 miles away. That's one reason I clean the shop each night. I can pile the shavings in small bags(that don't weigh more than 30 or so lbs because my garbage men also can't judge weight worth a s--t)

In my old shop I didn't care about wet wood turning but in this one I'm going to make roll down clear curtains that will contain the wet wood spray and keep the rough out shavings contained to a reasonably small area.

Can I borrow your kids! : )

Jennifer@Indy.USA

>

Sure, after I finish using and abusing them

John Trant (Baltimore/WashDC)

>

Finally a man after my own heart!

Doug Trembath

>I'm like him!

My lathe gets WD-40 when I turn lots of wet cherry or walnut, or oak, or if rust shows up, but my tools don't get dirty, nor do I clean up when a few chips are on the floor. I'm messy, dammit, but really pretty stuff comes out of there, so no one complains. Who's to complain, anyway? I make sure students have room to work, and if the shavings pile up so high that I can't turn a spindle, I push them out of the way into the bigger pile. I use a lawn tractor with a trailer and grain shovel, and mulch everything in site this time of year. Amazing how many shavings get burned during the winter months, too. Excellent way to get the heat going, just a pile of chips in the stove, a pull-the-trigger MAPP torch, and I have a fire in about three seconds!

I clean up when a client is coming for a shop tour, but my friends have grown accustomed to wading through chips. Many turners have restricted areas to turn, or are inside the house boundaries, and I truly pity them. Not to brag, but I have a 32X50 studio to as my domain. I feel that a spotless shop restricts spontaneity and creativity, and sponsors guilt, so I don't make too much of an effort along those lines. Who wants to mess up a clean shop?

I don't expect others to follow my guidelines, and don't think they expect me to follow theirs.

Fun thread, huh?

Doug Trembath

Studio in the Woods

Good thing - I was feeling lonely!!

Sam Dean

>Finally, someone else concerned more about creativity than a few chips and a little surface rust!!!! (OK, if I had one of those new fangled fancy, high dollar lathes, I might wipe it off a little more often...... at least for the first few months....)

Really funny thing about the chips - I do the same thing with the torch. I'll even put 'em in a paper bag with a few ounces of kerosene, then hit it with the torch. Never had a fire go out yet!

Hey, sometimes it just feels good to be a slob ;-)

Sam

I'm with Sam :)

Mike Rubes, Apex, NC

>I ususally wait until the shavings pile reaching the bottom of the ways and then scoop them into "lawn refuse bags", which my town picks up. If I have been turning green wood, I will wipe down the ways of the bed to remove the wet shavings and once every 3 months or so hit the ways with some paste wax, but that's about it. The only time I clean my tools is when I know for sure it will be a week or more until I get back to them. The only tool that has ever rusted on me is my 1" roughing gouge, which I use about twice a year.

I will say that when it is time to clean the shavings, I do bring over the dust collector and finish picking up what the shovel misses, so for a day or so (or until I chuck up the next piece) the lathe and area around it are very clean.

Mike

I like the soft feel of shavings underfoot in Apex, NC!!

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Tom Mullane

>"CLEAN UP" ... Oh you mean what has to be done when the shavings are almost to the ways of the lathe... LOL...

Since my shop is one side of the garage and my lathe it at the garage door, I open it and sweep all the shavings outside.. then shovel them into the compost bin... has worked so far.. of course if there is a load of snow on the ground I then have to actually vacuum them up...

The tools get wiped down each session and waxed..

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Dick Hines

>I just kick the shavings back to the wll under the lathe. Makes a nice pad incase I drop a tool. A law of nature, "A droped tool will alwasy land on the point."

When the chavings start to cascade back down under foot I put them in big bags and take to a friend who uses them in his chicken house.

If rust showes it's ugly head I will spray WD40 on the bed and use steel wool to rmove it. To clean the shavings off the lahe I use my compresser.

Lastbut not least. When the floor gets to bad a leaf blower works wonders. Just make sure the shop door is up.

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Tom In Red Deer

>My shop/garage has to be shared with the car so in the winter I just sweep all the shavings to where the car sits. The car packs them down and they absorb the melting snow.

I also bag a bunch and put them in the gardens. We have sandy soil and the shavings help hold moisture in the ground.

I do wipe the lathes about once a week with wd40 and then wax. The metal lathe gets lubed every week whether I have used it or not.

In the spring I clean up the shavings and open the garge door, put on my mask and fire up the air compressor. Oh yeah...I check for the wind blowing the right way.

Tom in Red Deer

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

John Trant (Baltimore/DC area)

>I too am not beyond using the leaf blower to blow out dust and hidden curls for Spring Cleaning.

John

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

David

>I don't think my wife would dig it too much if I used a leaf blower to get the leaves out of the basement, upstairs, through the kitchen to the garage, and then out to the curb. She might have something to say about that, but I wouldn't hear it as long as the blower was on.

Re: Clean up/tool maintenance/raincoats

Peter Teubel

>Sam wrote:

"The only upgrades I've been thinking about are a material handling fan to dump the shavings into a trailer behind the shop"

===========================

Got one of those. 24" diameter steel DC fan driven by a 2hp motor sucking thru an 8" pipe. Goes thru the wall of my shop and directly into a 4x4x8 enclosed trailer via 6" flex hose. 55 gallons of shavings are evacuated in less than a minute.

Now that is "Tim the Toolman" cool!

John Trant (Baltimore/DC area)

>

Call me "Felix Unger"

Dominic Greco at home in Richboro, PA

>

cause I'm a clean freak when it comes to my tools. I can't stand the sight of rust on them. Especially on my lathe.

So when I'm done rough turning wet wood, I blow the lathe off with compressed air. If there are any rust marks on the ways, they get buffed off with a scotch brite pad.

The shavings on the floor don't bother me that much. I can pick them up with a shop vac or a shovel when they get too deep. I usually just wait till the end of a turning session and scoop them up and into a trash can. It's the wet ones that land on my nearby cast iron table tops (bandsaw, jointer, and tablesaw) that really drive me nuts.

I also take a rather preemptive attitude towards rust. I treat the lathe bed with a coat of Boeshield T-9. This helps to seriously reduce any rusting that occurs. Like I said above, I also don't like to leave wet shavings sit on the lathe. These are blown off with compressed air. This also helps to dry off the lathe as well.

My nearby cast iron tools get covered with a sheet of 7 mil plastic, or an old shower curtain. I used to have a series of drop down plastic curtains surrounding the lathe on three side. these deflected the chips to the ground. But they also stopped the heat from getting to me in the winter! And I have no desire to work in a sweat box in the summer! So they might not go back up unless I can come up with a means to get some ventilation.

See ya around,

Dominic