BenchTop Oneida Dust Collector

Spoon carving is really a blast. This is something I have really come to enjoy. And in fact, I'm power carving the spoon, so one of the byproducts of that is, the tools that commonly get used for this kind of stuff don't have dust shrouds on them. So what can happen is, we have part of a spoon in our hands and parts that don't look like a spoon, a bunch of chips and dust all over the shop, all over the air. So, in addition to using these tools to carve the spoon, I'm using this Oneida benchtop dust collector in order to grab onto the chips and the dust as I go. So, it's positioned here on the bench, needs to be within 20 inches or less, of where you're working. It does have variable speed on the fans, so you can control how much or how little air you need to move depending on what it is that you're doing. So, you'll see that it really does a nice job at keeping the environment clean, and what's gonna happen as we work through the process here. Something to watch for is we're gonna run the dust collector throughout this process right now but we're gonna grab a portion here where we don't use it and give you a little split screen so you can see what the environment looks like when we are using it and when we're not using it. Now, in the world of spoon carving, here's what's about to happen. I'm gonna start with a ball gouge and I'll be using that in order to do the hollowing that we need on the spoon. Once I'm done with that, a die grinder with a cutting bar is gonna be our next tool. And that's gonna go a long way toward rough shaping the outside. Once we're done, and the shaping is complete with that die grinder, we're gonna come back with a sander, and with the sander actually mounted in the vice. We're gonna start working on smoothing up the outside of that spoon and really on that sanding step is really where we're gonna see the gain we get from having the bench-top dust collector in place. So enough said, let's make chips and make a spoon. The dust collector has six fans and as a result produces 585 cubic feet per minute of air flow. Power carving spoons is a great example where it's better to take the tool to the work than the work to the tool. So, a good solid vice is a great place to grab onto the spoon. And one of the things I learned doing this, is that, it's best to do the bowl hallowing first. I'm doing the bowl hallowing with what's called a ball gouge and basically an angle grinder. And that does a really good job of getting into the bowl, it's not chipping the wood, it's leaving a pretty good surface finish behind. That being said, it is good to work your way downhill in the grain. So, I'm trying to always go from the top the bowl toward the bottom of the bowl with my cuts in order to get the best surface finish. Remember that we wanna go deep here to make the spoon useful, but don't go so deep that we're turning it into a funnel instead of a spoon. When you've got a shape that you like then with this particular tool I can change to what's called a contour sander. And it's basically a tiny, tiny form of a random orbit sander, using self-adhesive sandpaper on the disc. And I'm starting with a hundred grit and it lets me ease right down into that bowl. Take out the facets, and two, I don't necessarily wanna take all the facets out cause I do like the hand cut look that I can get from this. So I wanna clean it up, but not clean it up too much. And then just like I would with any woodworking project, go through a progression of grits to make it smoother and smoother and smoother. Next thing I'm gonna do is work on the outside of the bowl and I'll do that with a die grinder that's set up with a cutting bar. You can get lots and lots of different shapes and profiles of cutting bars and having different profiles on hand is good for this kind of work because you could also use a cutting bar for the inside of the spoon bowl if you had a die grinder. And the way I'm gauging this is just by frequently feeling from the inside of the bowl to the outside of the bowl, I'm gauging that thickness with my fingers, to make sure I don't go too far and make the resulting bowl too thin. At the same time I'm working down toward the handle. And I like to try to make the handles on these things, a little bit curved instead of just a straight handle. Visually, I think it gives it a little better look and organically in your hand, tactically, I think it feels better in your hand when that handles got a little bit of a curve to it. In order to wrap up the handle, it's just gonna take clamping on clamping, re clamping the spoon and a variety of different positions so that you can get to the entire handle. And what I'm after here, really is just rounding, rounding, rounding in addition to this little bit of a curve and putting into by introducing that curve shape and just keep repositioning it now with the dust collector. What I have found is, it's best if the work you're doing is immediately in front of the dust collector, that really helps performance a lot. So part of what I'm doing here is keeping the cutting side as much as possible facing the dust collector. I love this step where with the cutting bar, I'm doing some pretty aggressive shaping on the spoon here. And I am really amazed at the way that that dust collector is grabbing those chips and pulling them toward the filter. What's happened to keep my environment clean here, is this is a dual filter system, and the main filter is a MERV-15 filter. With the roughing work done with the cutting bar, now I'm ready to do some sanding. And I'm going to do that with a sanding disc mounted under the angle grinder. In this case, it's easier to take the work to the tool to do the shaping. So I'm not really squeezing the angle grinder in the vice, I'm just gently holding it and then running the spoon over it, keeping it going in a fluid motion and basically riding over all of the facets that were created by the cutting bar and the die grinder, and getting those facets to change from valleys and mountains, to just nice rounded surfaces. And beauty's in the eye of the beholder here, you're done when you think you're done, there's no right or wrong about this. Once you've gone as far as you can go working through multiple grits with this sander, then the next step is just jump back to a conventional, random orbit sander. And that'll help you get into spots, especially kind of the neck of the spoon, where the handle joins the bowl that the sanding disc might not have allowed you into. If you don't have a die grinder with a sanding disc you could do all of the sanding work just simply using your random orbit sander to take that from start to finish. That's way too much fun I really enjoy carving these and I like leaving them, although they're power carved, I like leaving them a little bit faceted, a little bit rustic looking. So it's got that hand look to it. I really can't say enough about the environmental change, the environmental gain of having this running, while I'm doing this, And you can just see from the filter here, the pre-filter, how much stuff this has grabbed. And of course, there's another filter behind that, that's grabbing any finer stuff that goes through. And the other thing I want to point out about this unit, is that it does have a 110V outlet on it. So up to tools up to 10 Amps, you could plug the dust collector and plug that tool into the dust collector and then be running out here without having to run another extension cord or whatever. So, to wrap up your spoon, a little bit of mineral oil on this. We'll make it look like this, this is apple wood I'm working with this one is also apple and mineral oil does a great job of protecting that and you can easily refresh it whenever it needs to be rejuvenated just a little bit. So hopefully you enjoyed the spoon carving and you enjoyed the lovely dust collection of keeping the environment and your lungs clear.