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.

The three I am considering are the Bosch, Festool ,and Fein. Both being equally priced, I prefer the Festool over the Fein simply because of the twist lock hose, and location of hose connector. Trying to justify $$$$$$ or $$$, sometimes you get what you pay for...

Got this from Amazon yesterday, my neighbor called it the hootennanny. Theoretically,it is supposed to save time and money by collecting dust/trash in the bucket before entering the vacuum. We shall see, I am going to try it out on my old,soon to be replaced,filter clogging, sux at sucking vac. Fingers crossed... I used a bucket and a lid with a rubber seal,cut and drilled a plywood backing plate for extra strength for the thin plastic. Oops, sorry about the side ways pics Attachment 20384

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try some sweeping compound if its in your garage or project tent. it will help keep the dust on the ground while sweeping up.

VERY Interesting.
Good video here.
https://www.amazon.com/Oneida-Air-Sy...gateway&sr=8-3

That's a good tip. I haven't thought about how to get it off the floor without making a dust storm. Thanks for your input!

Very interesting indeed. I bought the cyclone alone, and the video was not on that. That kit is @ $50.00 more than the cyclone alone. I can see that it may be feasible for some people, not wanting to shop around for the extras. With that being said, I sure would like to have the hose. Thanks for sharing

In all seriousness, There are a lot of tools out there that have dust collecting devices built into them but I think you will find that even with the best dustless tools you will still have a fight on your hands. Its going to be hard to collect all the dust.

Yes,you are so right! While I know that I can't capture all of I hope to minimize it. A good vac/extractor is only part of it. Tool selection for each part of the job is also a factor. For instance,JBass uses a 1/2" hand held belt sander. This is a good tool for small areas, and dishing out around a hole to be patched,and most of the dust can be vacuumed while sanding.

One thing that helps me to keep dust down is to wet sand when possible. I mainly use Hutchins air sanders so there is no electrical shock hazard while sanding with water applied. It really keeps the paper from loading up and dose even better if you have paper that is rated for water use. The water may cause you problems just like the dust but if you can deal with the water it could help you out maybe. Just a thought.

Thanks for sharing this with us flyingfrizzle. This is another good option that should be considered. Just from looking at your vast list of projects,apparently this is a proven method that you have used many times.

Ok, so I did a temporary hook up to my old shop vac with the oneida dust deputy to see how it really works. I cleaned out the vacuum tub and put in a new filter. I used about a half a cup of sawdust,sand and flour(didn't have any sheetrock dust.) After vacuuming I checked the vac tub and filter and there was nothing visible inside. It was all in the dust deputy bucket, just like shown in the amazon video link that Old Goat provided. One negative aspect was while vacuuming it produced some static on the hose which could be a problem if your vacuum has onboard electronics. Grounding the DD unit and using anti static hoses or grounding the hoses to should eliminate the static.