An old shop vac, a crisper drawer, a hole, and some duct tape.
The new modern dust collection system for the lathe.

January 28, 2017 - Saturday

24 degrees/cloudy/windy/snow

Pentoga Road

I was awake early this morning, around 2:30, and slept sporadically until 5. Strange thing is, I know I had a dream that was worth remembering and recall thinking that I needed to store it away to be shared with Sargie. Try as I may, I can't remember a thing about it, only that I wanted to tell Sargie. 

Frustrating. 

I rode with Sargie back to Iron Mountain Friday morning and after filling the car with gas, came right back home.



The day was windy, but beautiful. I enjoyed taking my time and took advantage of any back road that I could find.

Grady's favorite landmark. He knows that he's getting close to Grandma and Pawpaw's house when he sees the structure sticking above the countryside and without fail, shouts, "Look! The Alpha water tower!"

I spent most the day in the shop. I was going to start turning, but in his daily email, Mississippi Brother Garry had talked about the dust collection system in his shop clogging and that he had to clean it. 

That got me thinking and as we've come to discover over the years, thinking for me can be a dangerous proposition.

If Mississippi Brother Garry can have a dust collection system, why can't I? 

Just one thing. His was commercially made and he has neat looking pipes and hoses running from one machine to the other. 

I didn't need all that, I just wanted the dust from the lathe sucked into that place where dust goes.

Hmm. Hmm.

Well, I had an old shop vac that has been sitting in storage over the shop. That was a beginning. What I needed was a hood. What could I use for a hood?

How about the crisper drawer that, until I purchased the inexpensive three-drawer plastic chest on Thursday, had held my lathe equipment.

How was I going to run a shop vac hose into that thing? Why not cut a hole? 

I needed some sort of receptacle that could focus the vacuum, suck the dust into the hood, through the hose, and end up in the tank. 

So I cut and I drilled and eventually, I came up with a passable system. Now I can commiserate with Mississippi Brother Garry when my dust collection system becomes clogged.

It's not pretty, but the hose is out of the way, as is the tank. Once the shop expansion is completed this summer, I'll rig it differently and take the tank completely out of the shop, but until then, my dust problems have been swept out the door, oh, under the rug... or, rather, sucked into a central tank.

If I weren't expanding the shop this summer, I'd have put the vac outside the shop. Since I'm going to use the existing wall in some manner, I didn't want to start randomly drilling large holes.

There are two or three projects I'm presently working on. Time was spent painting the background for the crappie. I really need an airbrush, but for now, two cans of spray paint worked just fine.



Still a work in progress, the frame around the picture needs work, the background cut and attached, and there's a bit of repair work to complete where the laminate peeled away. 

It was almost dark before I came in the house. For whatever reason, I decided to work up another large winter squash and ended up with two large cookie sheets full to bake in the oven.



Sargie was home fairly early and we enjoyed fried chicken for supper. Along with bacon and butter, it's one of our favorite food groups.



Sargie opens today. It's been a tough week, schedule-wise, for her and she's looking forward to having Sunday away from the Vision Center.

I don't know if I'm going to walk this morning. My feet and knees have been complaining and honestly, taking yesterday off from walking felt good. I may try a shortened hike of three miles this morning and see what happens.

Other than that, there's laundry to do and of course, why have a dust collection system if one's not making any dust?

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...