Keeping the floor swept

[Tom Bender]

How often do you sweep and vacuum the floor?

Half of my work is with hand tools so no dust collection on that, and power tools and machines contribute despite dust collection. My shop is small so it takes a minute to sweep it and 5 to 10 minutes to vacuum, so I sweep about every half hour and vacuum about every 3 hours, all depending on how much stuff hits the floor. Sounds like a lot but it keeps me from tramping up so much dust.

[Larry Frank]

Well, I have dust collection but still have dust, shavings, etc on the floor. I sweep about once a month and vacuum at the same time. It is a workshop and not a clean room.

[Matt Day]

You sweep every half hour?! I do a sweep/vacuum about every month. I wear shop shoes so I don’t track dust out of the shop.

[Jason Ost]

Usually, end of the day.

[Andrew Hughes]

My shop sits under the canopy of a live oak so get lots of leaves. No worries i use my leaf blower to clean out the wood shavings and oak leaves once a week.
Once in a while I have to broom up a pile before the leaf blowing.

[Jeff Bartley]

End of the day for me. Funny thing though: I use both power and hand tools, good dust collection. On a recent walnut countertop commission I scraped all the countertops after they went through a friends wide-belt.

After every scraping session I had black-snot from all the fine walnut shavings! That never happens during routine work on machines. On that task I swept after every session.

[Frederick Skelly]

Usually, end of the day.

+1. Same here.

[Jim Becker]

I'm very inconsistent with this, unfortunately, especially since I'm in the shop daily now for almost a year. I tend to "deeper clean" at the end of a major project and tidy up periodically while working through the project, but I really should get back into the habit of dealing with the day's dreck before I head into the house to cook the evening meal for my family.

[Patrick Kane]

I try to vacuum about once a week on Sunday afternoons. Atleast, that is what I aspire to. Ever since I put a bit of effort and money into the finish of the floor and walls, it’s a lot easier to find the motivation to shop vac the machines and floor. It drives me nuts when there is dust on my tools. It interferes with registering a work piece against a fence, or jigs/miter gauges get fouled up with spoil in the miter slots. Im not a clean person, but dusty cast iron is a pet peeve.

[Richard Coers]

I sweep about once a month, maybe less. But then again you should see my computer desk.
Jeff Bartley, you need to sharpen your scraper a little more often if you are getting black snot from using a card scraper! No way I can lift shavings off my bench into my nose. Maybe I just stand straighter? LOL

[johnny means]

You vacuum your shop floor?

[tom lucas]

I sweep/vacuum when it begins to bug me, usually immediately after large projects. I will brush off machines onto the floor every day. I also vacuum real good before applying any finishes. For safety, it is very important to keep pieces that could cause one to trip off the floor. I will take the time to pick up/sweep up pieces of this type as I see them. My shop is totally separate from the house and I don't wear my yard shoes into the house. So I can let some dust/chips/shavings linger on the floor for as long as I am comfortable with it.

[al heitz]

I am definitely not OCD, nor even a neatnik. When the chips and sawdust start to collect at my feet, they get swept into a pile out of the way so I'm not tracking through them. When the piles mount up, they go in the can. At the end of the project, there is a major sweep and vacuuming. There is also the question of project clutter. Almost everything ends up within easy reach, maybe even in piles in front of me, and stays there until the project is complete. Nothing gets put back until the end. It's pretty much a question of out "Out of sight, out of mind." As a matter of fact there are times that a project with all its parts sits undisturbed for maybe months on end. But when I get back to the project, I know exactly where I stopped, what to do next, and what I need. Should the household neatness fairy try to reorganize my "mess" it often ends in disaster.

[John K Jordan]

After every scraping session I had black-snot from all the fine walnut shavings! That never happens during routine work on machines. On that task I swept after every session.

A sharp scraper actually puts some extremely fine invisible dust particles into the air. I've heard that if you can smell it while working, it might be making dust. I once read a study showing the size and quantity of dust particles that come from various hand tools. (I wish I'd saved the reference. :( ) I've watched my Dylos particle meter counts go up when hand scraping nearby.

Oh, and I usually sweep up every couple of days or so or when I get annoyed, except around the lathe I often leave shavings on the floor longer.

[Robert Chapman]

I have dust collection but I always wait to clean up the shop [floor and tops of everything] until I finish a project. The final clean up means that the project is done.

[Tim Bueler]

I'm in my shop almost daily. Sweep at the end of day, always, and possibly several times during the day depending on tool usage. Most everything except routers are hooked up to dust collection. Vac every couple months in the winter when it's too cold to open the doors. During warmer months I open all windows and doors and get out the leaf blower, again, about every couple months.

[Doug Dawson]

A sharp scraper actually puts some extremely fine invisible dust particles into the air. I've heard that if you can smell it while working, it might be making dust. I once read a study showing the size and quantity of dust particles that come from various hand tools. (I wish I'd saved the reference. :( ) I've watched my Dylos particle meter counts go up when hand scraping nearby.


That is so very true. Also, sawing by hand puts a lot of fine dust into the air. If you can smell the wood, it's a potential problem. You're probably more exposed to fine dust from hand sawing than from using a machine hooked up to a good dust collector.

As to sweeping, a broom puts up a huge amount of fine dust into the air. My Dylos spikes big time. Vacuum only, thru a HEPA dust filter machine.

I don't want to be sensitized to wood dust. I'm already so sensitized to car exhaust that I can't work on or around older cars any more. Lord leave me just one last thing I can do with my hands.

[Von Bickley]

Leaf Blower.... As Needed.

[Rick Potter]

I have been known to sweep around the workbench and then sweep it under the bench for later (much later) removal.

My shop has so many things on the floor that sweeping is a major undertaking. Leaf blower for me also.

[William A Johnston]

I usually do a good clean up after a project and in between if there are a lot of chips on the floor.

About once a year I do a really good cleaning then break out the back pack blower with a respirator on and go to town. Then you have to wipe everything down again because of the fine dust.

So I guess it looks clean?

Bill

[Rod Sheridan]

Usually I vacuum at the end of the day.

Now I am doing some turning so when there’s a lot of shavings I turn on the DC and gently push them into the sweep under the lathe.....Rod

[Al Launier]

My tools are all on casters. I'll pull them out, run the wood through a machine, parkit, then vacuum machine & floor. I don't leave a machine/floor dirty after each use in case I have to leave. I don't like walking into a dirty shop & I don't like to track sawdust around, especially since my shop is next to my finished lower level and I frequently have to go upstairs through that area.

[Ole Anderson]

I have a Pergo laminate shop floor (basement shop), so sweeping it with a horsehair push broom when I can see a mess is enough. Previously it was concrete, so I had to vacuum more often to get the dust out of the pores in the concrete. I end to vacuum when I have metal shavings from my DP, cut off saw or grinder. No set schedule, as needed.

[Patrick Ebner]

I sweep after each job and sweep and vac the whole shop weekly

[Patrick Walsh]

Home shop and place of employment get treated differently for me. Both I sweep a fair amount to a lot.

Place of employment at days end or if I used a router. God bless my lungs but I blow things down with compressed air maybe 100 times a day. Friday the shop get a thourogh sweep at days end. Most days I ssweep quickly 2-3 times.

When working at hime in my shop I vacume only and I vacume l]after every operation that makes a mess. At days end I spend a good 30 minutes vacuuming every surface and the floor top to bottom. Me donts likes a mess when I’m on my own time. I don’t like a mess ever but the boss you know I want the boss to make some $$ so I can keep my job.

[Derek Cohen]

My shop (a double garage) is also home to one car, and I do not want to track shavings into it. In any event, plane shavings would build up quickly and it would be easy to lose items under them. Not to mention slipping on shavings is possible and therefore dangerous. Consequently, I sweep up when there is a break (just into a pile on one side), and remove the pile at the end of the day. I give the shop a vacuum at the end of a job ... when it is time to do an overall tidy up and sharpen handtool and bandsaw blades.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Zachary Hoyt]

I do some vacuuming every time I am in the shop. Typically I am in there in the evening for 3 hours or so a night. I vacuum as needed when tools are dusty or I am going from sanding brass to sanding wood or vice versa. The floor gets vacuumed 2-3 times a week, though if I am doing something really messy it's sometimes every day. I mostly only use a broom when I'm turning, to push the shavings under the Shopsmith so I'm not standing on them. Once I'm done turning the shavings get manually put in a 5 gallon bucket and dumped in the boiler to burn. I move the same 5 gallon bucket from saw to saw when I'm working, and scraps that are too small or low quality to keep go in it, and thus to the boiler. I save some pieces of good hardwoods that are too small for what I do in boxes and once I have 20-50 pounds I put them on the free section of Craigslist. People use them for knife scales, carving, crafts, or whatever, and it never takes more than a couple of days to get a response. Scraps that are big enough for me to use either get cut into rim blank blocks or put in boxes for later use. I have a box for each species that I save, and I go to the scrap box first when I need something, before I cut into a larger piece. I don't like to let scraps fall on the floor since the dust collector, drum sander, shop vac, cart and one work table are all on casters and get moved often.
Zach

[Pete Staehling]

For me cleaning frequency varies pretty widely, but it is usually somewhere between daily and weekly. I don't think I have ever vacuumed the shop floor other than maybe to hit a particular spot that was hard to reach with the broom if at all.

Most often I sweep up some of the biggest stuff like curls from hand planing or especially heavy areas of sawdust, but then I usually open the roll up door and blow everything else out the door with the battery leaf blower or the air hose. There are times when I use the broom more and sweep the whole floor, but that is the exception.

[Phil Mueller]

Like some already posted, I sweep/vacuum after and sometimes during every proceedure. After rough sawing boards, I clean it up. After hand jointing, I clean up. After hand face jointing, I clean up whenever the bench top gets covered. Floor is swept often. My work space is small and the spoil from woodworking drives me nuts. I joke that my workshop is probably the cleanest room in the house. Hand planes and the like even get brushed and vacuumed after each use.

If I get lazy, I vaccum up the waste off the benchtop during planing or whatever. Problem is I forget there’s other stuff on the bench. I think I have two erasers and maybe a small pencil in the vac debris I’m going to have to find when I empty it.

[Prashun Patel]

Sweeping the open areas where I walk is easy. I do that several times during a session mainly so I don’t slip. But the corners and shelves and out-of-path areas get cleaned whenever it looks unbearably dirty to me - about once a month.

If I am working with green wood, I take care to sweep and vacuum at the end of the session because of rust - not dust.

[David Utterback]

My pattern is as needed. Every few months, I move machinery out from the wall to get at what is there. The most frequently swept area is at the working side of my bench over to the front of the table saw. Hand planning, routing and hand sanding require the most attention, several times during a full day.

I was amazed, almost stunned, when helping Roy U clean up at the end of a class. Most students lent a hand with broom and grain shovel to pick up the bulk. After nearly everyone had cleared out, I noticed a robotic vacuum skimming across the floor - quietly getting the residue under the multiple benches and along the edges. A thoroughly practical and modern solution to an age old problem with a need for consistency. What a genius!

[Jim Becker]

The robotic vacuums/sweepers can be pretty effective as long as the debris remaining for them to pick up is reasonably small. There's actually a "heavier duty" version available for this kind of thing for folks who want to pay the piper. I don't know that I'd ever want one for the shop, but it's been an essential for keeping our large master bedroom floor tidy...our house is a dust generator!

Makes sense that Underwood would employ something like that in a commercial teaching environment both for safety and aesthetic reasons.

[Michael Costa]

I sweep up every day, so get the bigger stuff off the floor.
I have a leaf blower plugged in the back of my garage. Every time I go to work (cant be bothered when I'm done) I open my garage door and blast the left over crap out.

[Ron Selzer]

vacuum the floor after using the wide belt sander as I prefer to vacuum it out and then vacuum the floor, vacuum after emptying the dust collector, vacuum after running the router even tho router has dust collection. Definitely vacuum a lot more now that have shop vacuum piped in to various areas, then use 20' hose

[Charlie Jones]

I have dust collection. I vac off anything on the bench or machines at the end of my work session as well as anything on the floor nearby. Prior to starting a new project I vac the whole shop as much as I can reach . Sometimes I clean the whole shop with a leaf blower. Wearing a mask of course.

[David Utterback]

An afterthought: If one were to retire an existing machine, it might be an opportunity to experiment. Knowing very little about them, I could not conscientiously suggest to borrow one from the house to see how it would work.


The robotic vacuums/sweepers can be pretty effective as long as the debris remaining for them to pick up is reasonably small. There's actually a "heavier duty" version available for this kind of thing for folks who want to pay the piper. I don't know that I'd ever want one for the shop, but it's been an essential for keeping our large master bedroom floor tidy...our house is a dust generator!

Makes sense that Underwood would employ something like that in a commercial teaching environment both for safety and aesthetic reasons.

[George Yetka]

I sweep and organize at the beginning of working. that way when the dinner bell rings I can just go eat.

[Rege Sullivan]

My vac is convenient and reaches most of the shop with a 20ft hose from the ceiling so I vac my work area as I work or more accurately as I complete a task. It takes just a few seconds and keeps me from tracking stuff to other parts of the shop. Really a time saver in the end considering I used to vac the entire floor each time before leaving the shop. About once a month I make an effort to blow off all the high dusty surfaces, scrape and wipe down all the work surfaces, wax the cast iron surfaces and glue up table and give the shop a good vacuuming. I have dust collection and a ambient air filter that keeps the shop pretty free of fine dust.

[Rick Potter]

Ron S.

What did you use to pipe the shop vac system? What is your longest run of pipe plus the 20" hose, and how well does it work with that length?

I have an old 6HP (sure it is) shop vac I would like to pipe in. Got a bunch of 2" ASB fittings, but haven't gone any further yet.