Popular Woodworking 2007-08 № 163, страница 32

WOODWORKING

ESSENTIALS

BY SCOTT GIBSON

Setting Up Shop:

It's tempting to think of sawdust as little more than a nuisance, a housekeeping problem like mud tracked across a clean kitchen floor. Sawdust is more ominous than that. It does seem to get in every nook and cranny in the shop, clogging machines, filling pockets and eventually finding its way into the house. But sawdust poses real health risks to anyone who regularly spends time in a woodshop.

Exposure to sawdust can cause a variety of health problems, including

dermatitis (inflammation of the skin), respiratory problems and a type of nasal cancer called adenocarcinoma. With that in mind, controlling dust is one of those necessary if unglamorous basics of setting up a shop. It's better not to ignore it.

It's hard to eliminate sawdust completely. Unless you do nothing more than whittle spoons with a jackknife, sawdust is an inevitable part of virtually every part of woodworking. Most power tools produce plenty of the stuff but it

is the very small particles, those up to about 1 micron in size, rather than big chips that do the most damage. Effects vary by species, with a number of domestic and exotic hardwoods causing the most potential problems.

There are a variety of ways of controlling dust. Strategies can be broken into three broad categories: controlling dust where it's produced, clearing the dust that escapes into the shop air, and, finally, protecting yourself with a good dust mask or respirator.

Norm Abram's workshop includes a central dust-collection system that keeps the shop both cleaner and a lot safer. No matter what the equipment, dust collection is important in any sized shop.