marc: "the woodwhisperer" is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921, and by clear vue cyclones, clear the air and breathe easy. (jazzy music)
woodworking bench for sale craigslist, marc: of course, installing that cyclone is only half the battle. we now have an entireduct system to install to make sure that all thetools are fully connected
in the most efficient way possible. frankly, you can do this yourself. you can do the calculations to figure how many cfmsthis tool requires, make sure that this pipe has it. that's a little bit over my head. that's something that i think people spend a lot of time mastering. it's a knowledge basethat i don't really have.
it's something that i really do recommend that you rely on some of thegreat services out there. pretty much most of thecompanies that sell ductwork also have a ductwork planning service, but they are gonna needsomething very important from you, and that is a layout. they need to know where the tools are, the distances from the walls, the distance between the tools,
the distance to the dust collector. if you can give them that information, they can design a ductwork system that'll work for you. then also, the greatthing is they'll be able to give you the parts list. then you can just purchase that whole set, bring it to the shop, lay it out, and you're good to go.
what i recommend using is sketchup. if you haven't used it before, it's a very user-friendly system. you can actually get modelsfor the individual tools - you don't have to build them yourself - and just drop 'em into place, and you can get a good approximation. if your shop is already together, you can just take measurementswith a tape measure,
and really think in termsof where the ports are, if you're having troublefiguring out exactly where to measure to. give that informationto the planning service and you'll be good to go. once the ductwork arrives, i recommend laying it out on the floor, putting it into its approximate location where it would be on the ceiling,
and make sure you have all the parts, all the fittings, allthe ys, all the elbows, blast gates, everything that you need, and that'll give you alittle bit more confidence that once you're lifting this stuff up to the ceiling and assembling it, piece by piece, you know that everything's pretty much there and you won't have to make any emergency trips
or place any extra orders. the first thing i wanna dois give you a quick tour of what i've done so far. i've actually done prettymuch most of the work to get this thing installed, because i wanna show youone particular branch. if you see how one branch is installed, you know how the system works. you can install any branch that way.
first let me show youthe details of the system that i'm using, because the ductwork in and of itself is very, very important. you could use pvc. you could use hvac ductwork,the snap-lock stuff, but really the thicker,more industrial you can go, i would say this is something you may want to stretch your budget on a little bit
because i think it's absolutely worth it to get the high-quality stuff. what i've got here is something that i've never worked with before, but it's an industrial-type pipe. it's called nordfab. it's very quick to connectthe pieces together. it saves a lot of timeand a lot of hassle. frankly, this stuff isa dream to work with.
if you can get this stuff, great. if not, the one thing iwould recommend you do - there's a lot of things that will work - but stay away from theabsolute thin stuff. i think it's like a 28-gaugematerial that you can get. stay away from that stuff. that's the things you can get at like a home depot and lowe's, your local home center.
that stuff is not really meant for this type of work. that can and will collapseunder its own weight or under the suction power of a good powerfulcyclone or dust collector, so stay away from the super-thin stuff. all right, let me show you pretty much how this system works. then we'll go and actually install
one of my final branches. here's a typical drop setup. the horizontal length of straight pipe needs a 90-degree elbow. the elbow clamps on quickly and easily. not only is this clampingsystem convenient, it also joins the pipes withno interior obstructions. in this scenario, we're splitting the line to two separate tools, so i add a y.
each branch then receives a blast gate to control the airflow. to connect the flex hose, i'll finish off the series by attaching a flex-hose adapter. the flex hose slides right on and is secured with a standard hose clamp. as you can see, it is areally straightforward system. there's no screws involved.
you just put the pieces together, clamp 'em down and moveon to the next piece, but that convenience comes at a price. again, this stuff is not cheap, but i think it reallyis worth the investment if you're looking at afairly permanent setup. now that we know how toinstall one of these pieces, let's actually go and look at the layout on the ceiling,
and i'll give you a few tips. i don't really do this all the time, so i'm not gonna profess to have any sort of amazing knowledge on the topic, but i'll show you what i did. it made my life a little bit easier when hanging it, and then we'll actuallyinstall the last branch of the ducting system.
this is certainly one of themore precarious positions that i've ever filmed in. wish me luck. what you can see here are straps. these metal straps arewhat's basically holding all the weight of the system, and holding it to the ceiling. my rafters, my trusses, are going this way across the shop,
and they're spaced every 24 inches, so the cool thing is you can use your stud finder, and basically find one, and then measure every24 inches from there to get the locations. i would suggest pre-markingthose with pencil so you know where they are. the worst thing is, ifyou're sitting up here
with a length of pipe and you're trying to find a stud as you're moving across, it's probably not a great idea. if they're pre-marked,you're in good shape. the other thing is this whole line runs basically parallel with the wall, so i wanted to make sure that those marks that i put in the ceilingwere not only showing me where the stud is located so ican drill right into the truss,
it's showing me a specificdistance from the wall. this way, i know that mypipe is tracking parallel and not skewing in onedirection or the other. to make my life easier formaking those measurements and keeping this pipe parallel, i just cut myself a piece of scrap here, cut to the exact length, that basically represents the distance from the wall to the center of my pipe,
so whenever i laid out oneof the truss locations, i put this guy right up into the corner, mark it with a pencil, and i'd have an exact reference line that just keeps my head straight. when you're up on a ladder like this, and you're trying to look around, it's very difficult to tell when things are going perfectly parallel,
and nice and straight and level. so, things like thiswill really help a lot. but, having those marks on the ceiling ahead of time just makes your life a whole lot easier and, frankly, makes theinstallation much safer. here's a look at the hardware that i'm gonna use to hang the ductwork. there's a lot of differentways you can hang ductwork.
this one just works for me. i find it simple and easy for a one-man operation. what i use primarily is thismetal strapping material. it's fairly flexible, and it's got different-sizedholes in here, but when secured properly,it's really strong. i'm gonna use a lot of these along the length of the pipe,
so that no one is bearing the entire load. what i recommend against is using a very similar material, but it's plastic. this strapping, it's fairly strong but you run into a problem where this stuff can very easily stretch. depending on the type of screw you use, under a lot of weightthis could certainly give,
and cause you some serious problems. i recommend not using that. when i have an actual stud to go into, or a truss, i'm gonna use oneof my regular wood screws, but the problem is thetaper head on these - and i'm using this becausei have a lot of these - the taper head can really cause an issue because just like i mentionedwith the plastic stuff, it can cause the material togive as it follows that taper.
either use a panhead screw, or you can actually getyourself a little washer. by putting a washer on there, it may not look the best, but it certainly gets the job done. it distributes the pressure around the outside of that hole, and gives you a whole lot more support. there's less of a tendency for that
to pull and stretch against the holes that we have here. the other thing youmight want to consider is sometimes you just don'thave wood to screw into. you need to go into thedrywall for support, and i recommend just using goodold toggle bolts for these. the difference here isyou're gonna need a washer. so, i put a washer on one end, put it through the strap,
and then connect the actual toggle dealie. screw your hole in through the drywall, pop this guy through, and then you've got a pretty good secure connection that way. this is really the selection of things that i'm gonna use tohang all of my ductwork. you can take measurements with this stuff, but i find it much easier to work
with the actual pieces, because sometimes it's difficult to tell how far out a piece is going to be when a fitting is attached. i just find it easier toput that fitting on there, and hold the piece up. this stuff isn't that heavy if you're just dealing withone or two small pieces. what i'm gonna do is hold this piece up,
bring it so that the elbow pretty much touches the wall, and then i've got my sharpie ready to make the mark whereit actually intersects with the other connectionhere, the other fitting. i'm just gonna put a mark here. to cut the pipe, i mark a second line a few inches back from the first. this makes the pipe a little bit short,
but that's okay. i use one of the clamps to extend the line all the way around the pipe. i then use a drill to create a hole that's big enough toaccept my jigsaw blade. with a metal-cutting blade installed, i cut the pipe by keeping the tool still and rotating the pipe with my free hand. to attach the nipple, (laughs) nipple,
i simply slide it on tothe cut side of the pipe. the included rubbero-ring is then rolled over to the cut side, and a clamp joins the two pieces together. now back on the ladder,with the elbow attached, we're going to line everything up, and see how we did. i have to pull it back, i don't know - maybe about two inches.
this is actually a quick adjustment i can make right up here. loosen the clamp, bring this guy back about two inches. now, if your main line is nice and secure, and you've got a lot of support you should have no problem putting a small length of pipelike this out unsupported. you may see it sag a little bit,
but the next thing we're gonna do is secure this end up at the corner there, and that'll take all the weight off. just for the few minutes that we need to get all that stuff ready, this should be just fine. i'm just gonna slip my clamp on, and then clamp it in place. the next order of business is to think
about exactly how wewant the dust collection to resolve down here. once we figure that out, we just need to make the connection with a straight pipe upto that elbow up there. we actually have thisfrom our demo earlier. and this gives us an idea of exactly how these pieces are going to work. you have to look at where the ports are
on your various machines, and see if you can decide on a way that limits the amount of flex tubing that you have to use. bottom line is you just can't get away from using it. you just want to limit the amount. i'm thinking a good height- 'cause part of the thing that i'm concerned about is
where the blast gates are and i don't want to have to stretch too farto get the blast gates - so i think right about here. i think if this got terminatedright about in this area - maybe at the bottom of this outlet, that probably would be pretty good. it certainly doesn'talways work out this way, but check this out. this is a full, uncut, five-foot length,
right up to the elbow, and look where the bottom terminates. sometimes, you get lucky. i'm gonna install the other blast gate. of course, the connectionsare all gonna be made on a tool-by-tool basis,depending on your needs. you should be able to easily get a piece of four-inch flex pipe on to the fitting, and then on to the tool itself.
there we go. now, that's all there is to assembling one of these ductwork systems. we did an entire drop, went down to the y, and split off to two separate tools. that's pretty typical in my shop. i have a lot of tools clustered together, although my bandsaws are separated, and they're the only onesthat have a single drop.
every other one is something like this, and really, if you do one, you know how to do the rest. you just might have a slight variance in the type of y that you use, or the diameter of the ductwork that's dropping down, but the principle is the same. if you're not using nordfab,
you just have a little bitmore work ahead of you. you probably have a little more trouble cutting the material. i know i've installed thesnap-lock pipe before, and i've cut them by hand, which can really wearyou out pretty quickly. but, the bottom line is you just put a little bit more effortinto it and you'll still end up with a very serviceable ductwork system.
i have to say, for the amount that i change my mind - and if you've been watchingthis show long enough, you know that i change mymind pretty darn frequently, probably more than i change my underwear - so i need a system that is adaptable, a system that can bedisassembled and re-assembled without wasting parts and material. this fits the bill perfectly for me.
we've done the assembly of one drop, but i would like to showyou some of the other drops, and also just give you an idea of what the entire system looks like, so you can see the thought process that went behind it. there's some unique things about this one, so let's check it out. the intake chute of the cyclone
features a custom transition that connects to a piece of flexible metal ductwork. think of it like one of those bendy straws that kids and my wifeenjoy drinking out of. the next connection isa y that sends a branch out to the planer and drum sander. you can see i also havea capped y at the top that allows for future expansion. you can see the two drops here
for both of these tools,individually controlled, with each having its own blast gate, and it basically reduces down from six inches,eventually to four inches, where i have this flex tube attached. the next connection is another y that sends a branch tothe table saw and jointer, followed by a branch forthe stationery sanders. later, i have drops foreach of the bandsaws.
the drop for the tablesaw and the jointer, this is important to be able to really close each one off effectively and as close to the y as possible, because, obviously, both ofthem produce a lot of dust, and there's a pretty long flex-tube run to get these things connected. i wanted to make sure i had as much air movement there as possible.
you see what i did here is, even after the reductionafter the blast gate, i had some small four-inch elbows that helped me makethis turn a little bit, and it's always better to make those turns very slightly and withrigid material if you can. so, i've got one that helps me go in the proper direction for the jointer, and another that justgives me a little bit
of direction for the table saw. even though my old system in the old shop was also a clear vue, cv 1800, the ductwork was reallyits major down flaw. i just did the best i could with what i had at the time, and it was a lot of hodgepodge materials. and i had to make a lot of turns. every time you make a turn,
and you take your main lineand turn it 90 degrees, you're losing airflow. the other thing was, theceilings were so darn high, and i had those big drops to pull all of that material up, so one thing thatconstantly plagued me was clogging in the jointer. in fact, even though this guy's been in storage for a long time,
there's a ton of dustwedged inside the system. i don't know - if you look closely, you can actually see it right at the port. just for fun, i figured iwould fire up the system, and see what happens,leaving this line open, and just seeing if it's gonna pull it out. and if it does, how effectively. so, let's see what happens. (sound of machinery)
that was pretty cool. as you can see, the new setup makes a huge difference. i even let that run a little bit longer, and i noticed some maple coming out. i don't know when the last project was that i had actually built with maple, so that stuff has been stuck and caked in there for a while,
and this system was able to pull it out. that's really just a testamentto the ductwork setup, because i had the cv 1800setup at the other shop, and i wasn't able tocollect that efficiently. it really comes down to not only having a good-quality, powerful system, but coupling that with a ductwork system that's been designed by someone who knows what the heck they're doing.
i designed the other one myself, and it was horrible as a result. it's very importantthat you take advantage of these design services. if you're gonna go through the expense, the time, the effort,to do a ducted system, do it right because it's gonna make a huge impact on the final result. frankly, if you have theductwork designed right,
you may not need quite as powerful of a system as you think you need. don't use brute force. use knowledge to make sure that this is done efficiently. so, that's really about it. i want to wish you guys a happy woodworking safety day. stay safe in your shops,
and if you have any questions about this dust-collection stuff, let's talk about it in the comments. i don't know a whole lot about it, but after this experience, i definitely have a better perspective on what you might need to dofor the most efficiency. thanks for watching and, once again, happy woodworking safety day.
(mellow music)