Official Luthiers Forum!

Well I think I finally did it....

I broke the bank today, and I'm going to have to fix up that dog house now...

I've been making tons of progress on the dream shop and today dropped the final load of cash for all the dust collection ductwork. Man was it expensive and COMPLICATED, I spent a week just figuring out a parts list and going over it until I could'nt find any more problems with my layout. It's easy in theory to do the layout, until you start having to work up and order and make sure that your plans will actually work

I have to say that Penn State is one great company, I used their planning service and they laid out a really nice setup for me. I made a number of changes to it like running 7" pipe all the way through the shop ceiling as opposed to 6", but their plans solved a number of sticky issues for me. They have been nothing but helpful and professional and I highly reccomend them to anyone wanting to upgrade their dust collection system.

Along with the ductwork I ordered a ceiling mounted air filter to keep the fine dust down, I'm not sure there is much else I can do to keep the dust out of the shop. The table saw now has a dust collector on the top and I'm sealing the back with sheet metal so it can collect on the bottom as well. I added drops to the workbench so that I could do dust collection there if I was working on something.

The only issue now is one that Paul Woolson warned me about and that's the dust collector filling up quickly, I'm thinking about rigging a larger bin to collect the waste or maybe get two that I can swap.

Also in case some of you had not noticed Grizzly is now selling pre-made shop cabinets at really good prices, I looked for a long time for a pre-made solution and all of them where SUPER expensive, when I worked out the grizzly one the cost was 1/4 the cost of having one put in and I get more storage with the grizzly setup.

So all that's left is to get the cabinets installed next month (it's going to take some time to run all that ductwork, my arms hurt just thinking about it), then the very last thing is we are going to have an air conditioner installed in the shop so I can work in the summer without cooking.

Previously I worked in the early morning and late evening and did other things in the afternoon when it got hot, we want to avoid that here. The 'Boss' is expecting me to be producing things as soon as we get this shop finished, talk about a slave driver!!!

All this is a little scary because before we had been making little purchases here and there and it took 5 years to build up the shop, this time we are nailing it one big drop. It's added up so fast with materials, time, new tools, building and the CNC machine which we are still paying off

To add insult to injury, I have a TON of tone wood that I've been collecting but I don't have things like kerfing, bolts, carbon rods and all the little things so at some point I have to place more orders so I can start building again, and we all know how expensive the little things can be when building.

I feel better now, I just needed to share that with someone and the 'Boss' is out of sympathy on this one, especially since she wrote the check for the ductwork this morning

Cheers

-Paul-

_________________
-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

I was begining to wonder if you got too close and got sucked into your dust collection unit, seeing as you havent been around for a while!
Cheers
Charliewood
Good Job on getting it all done - I less headache while you are building guitars now!

Does your dust collector have a warm air return or are you just sucking the heated are outside?

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Keep up the hard work! Sounds like you will be up and running in no time at all.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Michelle is gonna have your hide buddy!

_________________
Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com

John I bought enough pipe to run a return for that very reason, the scary thing is I bought the 'Economy' ductwork, I don't even want to know how much the premium would have been ;)

My goal was to be up and running by July but I think we can make june for operational, not fully complete but at least I can starting building things and get back into the swing. My single biggest concern was dust and it's effect on my lungs, had some time to consider how I was doing things and what changes I wanted to make

This has been super frustrating at a number of points where we kept running into issues no matter how much I planned, I finally feel like I can finally see the end now and know that we will make it. I'll just be poor when this is all done, but I'll be building again which is the drug I've needed for some time now

-Paul-

P.S. Lance, my hide was not the part I was worried about

_________________
-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Paul that sounds like it's going to be one awesome shop. I have bought from Penn State for years and I agree. They are a very good company. One word of caution on dust collection. The bigger the container the heavier it is to empty and dispose of. My lowly Jet 1145 backs the dust from my drum saner into the bag so dense that at 1/4 full it is very heavy. A half full bag would be too heavy for me to carry up the shop steps. Plus the garbage men would probably curse me.

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Davis, glad it's all starting to come together. Good call on the air return. Thought it's a pain in the neck to have the big filters in my corner, it makes all the difference keeping the heat/humidity in check.
Bob C, one time I overfilled my container so I just set it out on the curb (it happened to be on garbage day). My trash man, who has a HUGE attitude, took the lid off and just kicked the can over in my front yard. Nothing like natural rainforest mulch for the grass.

Paul,

Any way you could rig scaffolding so you could lay down while you hang all that ductwork?

Be sure and post pics!

_________________
now known around here as Pat Foster
_________________
http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I just spread mine down the hill. It's nice living out in the boonies with several acres, except for the mowing and such.

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Well worth every penny for what's gonna be the shop of the century!

Hang in there Paul, you're almost done!

Serge