J. Phil Thien's Projects

Sorry for the delay.

It is THEEN.

Hi, I am also a Philip, and I have been doing wood work since 1957, my Seventh BIRTHDAY, I was given a "WARDS" Lakeside brand 16 ounce hammer, a carpenter's saw, etc.

I have built Stick Homes, Log Houses, Hardwood Floors, and finish carpentry.

Today, retired, I keep my hands busy with smaller projects, as well as working in other media.

My WOOD SUPPLY, includes species that folks do not see often, I have several Square Feet of MADRONE milled in the N.W. corner of CALIFORNIA, as flooring, and when I found it I asked about why it was hidden away: My BOSS told me it was from a Special Flooring contract, and he ALWAYS skept 10% of the contracted footage in case they needed repair, It WAS in the CONTRACT, for customer protection.

He had completely forgotten about it, and as he thought, WELL, it was almost 20 years old, we were talking in 1992 . . .

So I will be doing a Winter Project from it. IN 2025!!!

I also have quite a bit of Rock Hard MAPLE, the species used to make bowling alleys, WHICH was where I got it, a remodel, REPAIR of the first 10-12 feet of each lane!

I asked what the crew would be doing with their "waste" and was soon loading it into my Subaru Forester, Two trips to bring it home!

Does anyone else get SALVAGED WOOD that way

I'm making a YouTube video about the separator, and in my research, I've found very little connection between the work and the designer. I'd like to talk a little about the separator's development, as presented here, but I have a problem. I don't know how to pronounce Thien, and there's disagreement among YouTubers.

Is it pronounced like THEEN or like THINE??

Thanks in advance!

Soon after completing my HF DC separator (see my post: "Thein Separator with Younker Lift"), I decided what the heck and bought a canister filter for it. Being as it was at the end of the pandemic, it took a little over a year to arrive.
It was worth the wait.
It is light years ahead of the bag that comes with the DC in keeping the shop's air clean.
I am still amazed every time I use the DC at just how efficient the separator is. It even gets a large amount of the finer particles, such that I've emptied the bin a couple times and there is still barely anything in the bag.
I thought it must be on the inside of the canister filter, but an inspection of it showed very little accumulation.
After I received the canister, I considered also buying the larger impeller, but I've had no issues with the stock one, so I'll skip that. My longest run of 4" pipe is under 20 feet, and there are a few bends in all my runs.
I am curious to know, anyone who has installed the larger impeller, did you notice any difference in the quantity of dust that gets pulled through the separator into the filter?
I wonder if at some point, an increase in airflow would pull more dust through without separating it.

Hi folks, I am Bob Crane and I live in southern Ontario. I have a couple of design/engineering questions about Thein seperator design. All of the limited engineering skills that I have lead me to believe that there is some defineable relationsip between the diameter of the baffle chamber and the cfm rating of the air supply. Vacuums are slower yet more powerful that blowers. Does the air speed  affect the seperation efficiency and is there an engineering formula to follow if I know the cfm of my vacuum? My second question relates the thickness of the secondary baffle. I am building a "top hat" seperator and find myself wondering if I should use 19mm ply or 1/4" mdf. All feed back is welcome and thank you for allowing me to join.

Picked up a better anemometer, and with the baffle set above the 4" barrel collection fitting, I'm getting a reading of about 946cfm.  After about 2 hours of cutting mostly 3/4" hardwood plywood on the table saw, my collection bag under the filter canister is completely empty! 

Will be doing some finish sanding (220 grit) on the drum sander in a few weeks.  That will really show me how well this setup works.

Couple months ago I built a DC using my 16 gallon Rigid shop vac and two 5 gallon pails that fit together. The idea came of the web. It separates the larger chips quit well but fine dust still gets into the shop vac and plugs the filter before long. So today I added the Thien baffle just below the inlet post.

Actually I've just added a central vac that is vented outside shop so the Rigid shop vac won't be used for now. Problem with the central vac though it doesn't have the same power. Next step is to change the Rigid vac to vent outside.

comments anyone?

TFL

newbie here from up north of the 49.

Hi Doug,

Sorry I missed your reply, if you're still watching this forum ;), but in answer to your question, the build has been working great.

The only thing that I would change from the original build is that I would not use the custom shaped wooden blocks super glued / epoxied to the galvanized chip bucket as seen in the photos. The reasoning for the blocks in the first place was to keep the inside surface of the bucket smooth. But because of the tight fit in the mobile stand, at least one block would get bumped sideways every time I emptied the bucket. One time, the block fell off, got re-glued and that worked for a while, but eventually, happened again. The this led me to eliminate one of the wooden blocks and through drill/ fasten the pull-down. No other blocks have fallen off since, but should they, I plan to through drill and fasten again.

Kind regards,

Kelly

Got quite a bit of progress made since first post. Hard to believe it's been 3 months...



Here's my idea for the hinged tongue.  This would allow me to mount the baffle in place & leave it, while still having an easy way to empty the barrel when it's starting to get full.  Since I made the baffle and lid separate pieces, this seemed the easiest thing to do.

For the first setup, I have placed the baffle above the 4" port.  The thought being that with the airflow being under the baffle, the baffle itself will block some of the smaller particles from going up and into the DC. 


A lot of the work was preparing the 6" rigid duct & figuring out where exactly to place everything.  HVAC duct was used as it's cheap and readily available.  It's also really easy to cut with my Bauer battery powered metal cutting shears!  All seams are coated with duct sealant, then topped off with Aluminum HVAC tape to ensure no air leakage.  Even sealing the gap where the duct and DC come together. 


I used stainless steel rivets (since I already had them but no galvanized rivets) to connect all the ductwork together. 


These are mostly only sealed on the outside, but they got 2 layers of fiber reinforced DP 1030 mastic + 2 layers of tape on each rivet. Where I could easily access both sides, the inside also got a layer of mastic, but no tape due to the amount of rivet head that was sticking out.
 


For the 4" connector, I riveted it in place from the inside, leaving the long heads on the outside of the drum for easier sealing inside & out. 


The longest process was actually figuring out where to locate the drum in relating to the DC,  I ended up moving the DC twice & re positioning the drum 3 times to find the best solution!  In the end, I put it next to my big roll-up door which has a somewhat recessed corner, so there's more room inside my workspace. 



Everything is metal to metal, even my 4" duct has a continuous steel spring inside that will allow for easy grounding, so no worries about static buildup!

To seal the drum and drum lid against air leakage, I put a 1/2" thick x 1" wide ring of closed cell foam around the area that sits on the drum rim, then I stuffed 25 feet of 3/4" closed cell backing rod between the side of the lid and the side of the drum (with an average gap of about 1/4 inch) which ended up being just over 3 full loops around the drum. 

Some basic testing has shown me that I get a least 580 CFM of airflow at the 4inch connector, and that I need a better anemometer that can read more than 67MPH airflow. 

The Grizzly 1.5HP DC is rated at 1250 CFM, and I'm guessing that the actual airflow at the 4" connector is closer to 700 CFM, possibly higher.  But it'll probably be a few months before I get a better meter.