What do I need to do?

[kcasser]

New dirt smells different.  ;D ;D

What I was doing (probably also dumb) was hooking everything up except the top bag.  Then I'd turn it on, and if I saw any dust blowing out the top of the funnel it told me that everything wasn't going into the bottom bag.  I think I'm expecting too much.  I can't imagine that every bit would stay in the bottom.  What should my test results be?

[phil (admin)]

New dirt smells different.  ;D ;D

What I was doing (probably also dumb) was hooking everything up except the top bag.  Then I'd turn it on, and if I saw any dust blowing out the top of the funnel it told me that everything wasn't going into the bottom bag.  I think I'm expecting too much.  I can't imagine that every bit would stay in the bottom.  What should my test results be?

LOL.

Here is an interesting thread started by Allan Johanson (who was posting here but seems to have vanished  >:( ):

http://www.woodmagazine.com/dgroups/index.jsp?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a8068d542-84e7-4789-9133-cb8743c46c54Forum%3a1e6da4f3-cce8-4881-bb59-c1d7c3316243Discussion%3a3df14382-414b-4068-9a41-524523642f77

If you do some more reading at the same Wood Magazine site, you'll see Paladin modded his single-stage w/ a baffle and he uses a cart. filter.  He has seen substantially less dust in his filter.

Why?  My theory is the same amount of dust is getting to the filter, but that the bag has so much less surface area that it looks dirty that much faster.

[kcasser]

That was an interesting thread.  Is there a 'poor man's' cfm gauge?  I would like to test cfm strength + residual dust in the upper bag vs the width of the wall of my coffee can.

[phil (admin)]

That was an interesting thread.  Is there a 'poor man's' cfm gauge?  I would like to test cfm strength + residual dust in the upper bag vs the width of the wall of my coffee can.

I use a weather-vane type handheld anemometer.  There are varying grades of these, I use a Kestrel.  Not that this provides wind speed, through which you can compute CFM.  You need to take care to take multiple measurements and average them, because air travels at different speeds within different sections of a pipe.  But ultimately, I use mine for relative measurements and it works well for that purpose.

I purchased mine on eBay used and it works very well.  I was patent and got a pretty decent one for $25 or $30.

[kcasser]

Cool idea!  I used to have a simple one, not as good as the Kestrel, but maybe good enough for relative readings.  I'll have to see if it's still here somewhere. :)