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.