Bathroom Steel and Dust

Hi All,

My TS was purchased from Glenn. It had 90 # bag of cement (wrapped with plastic for safety) on the shelf for, don’t you dare vibrate, ballast. I wanted to add better dust collecting and the cement was in the way. I went to the local scrap steel (and other kinds of recycle) establishment to see if I could get the desired weight with something smaller than the bag of cement.

The boss had a guy cut three 16” x 16” pieces of 1” thick steel plate. The steel was originally one of those plates you drive over while roadwork is being done. The 16” plates weighed 57 pounds each. (Total costs $10.00) I put two of the plates in the bottom of the TS base. The plates did not go wall-to-wall like the cement and took up only 2” vertically. I put a layer of the soft “crinkly” shelf liner under the bottom weight and another on top of it to reduce possible vibration noise and to reduce possible shift in position of the steel. Actually I think those plates will move or vibrate about the time Bird’s Eye Maple sells for 1 cent per board foot.

View attachment 14200 A steel plate

View attachment 14201 Two steel plates in saw base

I cut 3/8” ply to fit over the open sides of the base. I cut a 4 inch (plus a little) hole and mounted a 4” Closet Flange, Spigot Fit (yes that is the name of it), ABS material, (Lowes #436863, $4.53) over the hole.

View attachment 14202 Closet Flange attached to ply which is fastened to TS base

An ABS Soil Pipe Adapter (Lowes # CL5805, $5.77) friction fits right over the Closet Flange on the saw. 4” flex hose makes a very tight friction fit over the other end of the Soil Pipe Adapter. I didn’t use clamps, I just put tape over if (security blanket I guess). The Soil Pipe Adapter (SPA) goes on and removes easily from the Closet Flange when desired and yet stays in place without glue, screws or whatever.

View attachment 14204

View attachment 14203

Note that the SPA on the right shows a lump where the casting sprue attached. The SPA on the left shows how it looks when the sprue is ground/filed off. This is an easy task.

View attachment 14205

The 4” flex made a loose fit with my 4” aluminum blast gate from Rockler (#20864, $10.99, about $6.00 on sale). I slathered some silicone glue on the gate and in the flex. I then tightened the flex with two circles of bailing wire. I put some heat shrink over the sharp twisted bailing wire ends and bent them down into the “groove” (in the flex) to get them out of the way. This appears to work very well.

View attachment 14206

So we went from dust (must be the dry beer), through the water closet flange, through the SPA, up through the flex, through the blast gate, through the 4” to 6” adapter and down (all of my ducts have a very slight downhill slope towards the DC) the PVC to the dust collector. Works like a charm.

Enjoy,

Jim

I'm really suprisded you got steel plate that cheap! The 2'x3'x3/8" plate on the top of my welding table cost me $150. Now that was new, but after reading some of the welding forums I determined that if I could find something at a recycling place (haven't found one around here yet) the cost would be up there.

Bathroom Component

Hi All,

I gather that the plumbing I used didn't trigger everyone's mind to bathroom. The flange that fastened the drop to the saw was a toilet mounting flange. The rest of the black stuff was sewer connectors. To my demented mind that said, "Bathroom." Oh Well You Can't Win Them All.

The dust part (dry beer) was triggered by an ancient set of commercials for "Rheingold the dry beer." The beer was so popular that many places had to remove some urnals and install dust pans in their place. By the way, if you understand this, you are too old or your father explained it to you.

Matt, If it had been $50.oo I would not have used the steel plate...let alone a three digit price. The scrap people were real nice. They cut it to size. I told them approximately 16" x 16". The man said he didn't have a tape measure. I showed him the length of two and a half, one-dollar bills. He reached down and whacked off a 1" rebar to that dimension and used it as a measuring stick. He did it as casually as I would break off an 1/8" dowel to length.

The torch man volunteered, "You draw it on the plate and I'll cut it." The man who took the money asked, "Is ten-dollars too much?"

They cooled the steel with water and took it around to my car. Then they scouted up some scrap wood (stickers) to put under it to keep the heat and dirt clear of my trunk carpet. Then I got the, "Drive slowly and when you are half way home stop, open the trunk and check on it." routine. I guess that is because I live in friendly Southern California where we eat our air and live on top of each other.

Enjoy,

Jim

I guess if you are happy with your anti-vibration technique this does not really matter, but just so everyone knows, reducing vibration via weight is only part of the solution.

Years ago old tools were built out of cast iron and lots of it because this produced mass and it limited vibration just because it was so darn heavy. The thing is though, you get better results by using sand or shot. The reason is, all those trillions of particles of sand rub together and move as vibration is added to it. Not only does the sheer weight of the sand reduce vibration, the friction of sand particles colliding with other sand particles also reduces vibration by acting as trillions of miniature shock absorbers.

I use sand on most of my tooling to reduce vibration. Of course if your steel plate is working for you then there is no need to ad sand, but per given pound , sand will work better for you.

As for the price of steel, its getting up there. I just ordered a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/4 inch mild steel plate and it was 458 dollars. In contrast a 1/4 inch sheet of 316L stainless steel was 1500 dollars. I hope I don't mess up!!

Hi Travis,

What you say makes good sense. However, I went to steel to reduce the volume of the ballast. Glenn had placed a 90# bag of cement in the TS base and that was OK for vibration---Not great but definitely OK.

Glenn extracted dust from the bottom of the saw itself. The saw came to me. I wanted to extract from the side of the base with a mechanism that would allow me to easily disconnect the DC flex and place it on a TS mounted router. Therefore, I enclosed the base. With the base enclosed the bag of cement became a real obstacle to air flow.

I went to approx 120# of steel. The cement ballast was wall to wall and 5 or 6" deep. The steel was only 2" high and left several inches of space around the periphery. I ended up with more weight and more free space. This allows air to have a much smoother flow. Anyway that's what created the "steel" design.

Enjoy,

Jim