Bob's Visit to Cincinnati

So, this is Bob. Doranda wanted me to write about Leon and my visit to my parents house last week. A month or so ago my Mom and I finally convinced my Dad that he should turn the used to be missionary apartment in their basement into a workshop. So, to help out, Leon and I flew out to get things all started.

I should have taken a before picture but didn't. So, just imagine the room being empty. First thing we did was bring in the two workbenches my dad has. They are from his Grandpa and his Uncle. The one from his Uncle is actually mine, but I don't have a place big enough for it yet. It's the one on the right with the drill press on it. The cool thing about that workbench is the top. It has an old bowling alley lane for the top. So, it is super hard and super heavy. At least a couple hundred pounds just for the top.

The picture above in the middle shows what we worked on most of the time. A table saw station. It is 6ft deep and 4ft wide. So it will be a lot easier for my Dad to rip sheets of plywood, due to his new outfeed table.  And it pretty much only cost us like $20. We built it mostly out of excess wood my dad had, hence the random blue wood you see. That was from an old bunkbed I think.There are also a couple more cool features I will get into in a second.

The other reason I headed out was to help my dad install his Dust Collection system. He got a really nice 1100cfm Jet Dust collector, with a canister top and 40ft of 4" hose, on craigslist for $250. They run about $750 new. He also got an air filter with a 1 micron filter on it for removing any fine dust particles in the air. This was exactly what my dad needed. Being in the basement and working with wood means a lot of dust in the air and wood chips everywhere.

We ran the dust hose to the miter saw station and the table saw station.  Below is my dads miter saw station. He had most of it already built, except for the yellow box around the top. If you have ever used a miter saw, you know they get wood chips everywhere. We built the enclosure around the back of the miter box and put a 4" port at the bottom of it so the dust collector would suck up all the mess. And it works beautifully. We tested it, probably a little to many times. And nothing escapes. It is really really awesome.

Here is a better view of the dust collection routing. The dust collector sits in a closet, and later my dad will put doors on it to cut down on noise.

In the above picture, you can see a black hose coming up from the floor to the back of the miter station. This hose has a cool port on the end, so you can attach it to other ports when you are using a different tool. The goal is to get my dad a jointer and planer and bandsaw, so, he would need to run the dust collection hose to those as well.

The picture below shows the ports for the table saw station. There are two because we built the router table into the table saw station. So the top port is for the router, the bottom is for the table saw.

Below is the hose connected. What we did is cut out a huge hole below the table saw, and then built a box under it with a sloped bottom that leads to the port that the dust collector hose it hooked to. So, when you cut something, the wood chips fall down, roll down the slope, and get sucked into the dust collection hose. Actually, though, the dust collector is so strong you can feel a slight suck at the table saw blade.

This next picture is the router station built into the table saw out-feed table. My dad needs to build a new fence for the router, but with the dust collection on it does a fantastic job at collection the chips. Everyone who has ever used a router know that they are a huge mess. We made the port behind the router 2" in diameter, this collects any debris if you are using the router to add trim to a board or something. And then we added a second hole to the left of the router bit, cause you push your board from right to left, to collect any debris cause by cutting groves in a board.

All in all, Leon and I had a blast in Cincinnati!!! And my Mom was super excited to spend time with Leon while I kept my Dad busy in the basement.

Thanks Doranda for letting me spend a couple days with my parents! Your the BEST!