Dust mitigation
 

Looking for opinions and experiences from CSC'ers who have dealt with the dust that the fiberglass boat repair process creates. I have recently acquired a 72' SF, and looks like I may have to use my attached garage and/or driveway for a while as my work area. I have looked at some of the high dollar options (fein, festool ) and though I am not opposed to going this route,I wanted to see what set ups you guys are using and how effective they are. Ideally I would like my grinder to connect to a vacuum, so any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated.

I used a festool sander and vac to sand the bottom of a 20SF down to gel coat. That sander was awesome. It was a loaner and I put some hard miles on it :0

I've done most of my work in my attached garage. I use a Fein shopvac 100% of the time(either hand held or attached). Make sure you have a good filter and use bags in your vac. Couple things I've found useful.

HERZO Universal Surface Grinding Dust Shroud (If I'm using the grinder I still pull the boat into the driveway. The shroud greatly reduces the dust but it's not perfect.)
Grizzly T10745 (I hold the vac hose in one hand and sander in other. This works great for small jobs)
Bosch 1250DEVS

Hope this helps.

Hey Hermit, I am strongly considering the festool components, I just can't pull the trigger on it just yet because of price. Ouch!!! They say it is better to hurt once than to hurt again from the repurchase. Do you think that the festool saved you any time on your sanding job?

Hey JBass, The bosch is also one of the grinders I am considering. It is less than half the cost of the festool. I do like that Grizzly belt sander,I'll surely need that. I am currently looking at a device( should be delivered today) that you connect your your vac that supposedly reduces the the amount of dust and particles that actually make into the vacuum bags. I'll post it tomorrow. Thanks

Just get a good air wand/gun and when done sanding blow it away into the neighbors yard. Lol
Good thing I don't have neighbors

I can't imagine doing a restoration in my attached garage. It's bad enough that the location in my back yard where is did my rebuild likely qualifies for a Superfund site.

I wish I didn't have such good neighbors. That approach sounds a lot less expensive. Lol... That is how we did it when I was a teen(eons ago)working part time a repair shop. They didn't have neighbors either.

It was definitely the tool for the job. It had enough gusto to take down about 4 layers of hard epoxy paint off a 1970 hull. It also had the finesse to not harm the gelcoat when I got down to it. Once I was done I barrier coated and used ablative paint. My normal sanders are Bosh and Dewalt RO's . The Bosh is very good but the Festool was a great product.

Somewhere I have some pix?!

Yea, probably a bad idea,right... Seems like you can't ever get rid of all of it. I may just tent it up during the winter when it is either cold or raining during the south Alabama winter. Even doing that,I would like to capture as much dust as possible. That and the silica dust are bad news... I know a guy who has a respiratory disease ,which he thinks the glass work contributed to.