Wright Turned Wood Turning

I'm pleased to introduce a blog post from WrightTurned at Woollen Tree. Peter will be joining us here with wood turning projects. 

This first post is all about, well I'll let him tell you

 Improving Dust Collection System

With my recent upgrade to a Record Power Coronet Envoy Lathe I have been reorganising my “workshop” to try and make it more efficient. I say workshop, but it is really my garage, and things are arranged such that work surfaces collapse and the bandsaw and other equipment all slot away to allow the car to fit back in the garage when needed (although since retirement, the tendency is to leave the workshop set up for woodturning more often than not!).

One of pieces of equipment I have never been comfortable with is my dust collection system; its not the actual equipment (Record Power Cam Vac), but how to arrange/ secure the 100mm dia flexible hose. Because this new lathe has a swivel head I need to be able to adjust the position of the hose to best suit where the work is.

Here a few shots to show how I need to position the hose when turning or sanding with the lathe head either in line, at an angle or fully rotated through 90 degrees

I had previously made a Heath-Robinson stand to support the hose, but it was never very stable and was more trouble than it was worth.

So I started looking at proprietary equipment that wasn’t too expensive and offered the flexibility I was after.

There are lots of angle poise type stands and other flexible stands on the market designed to hold smart phones or tablets etc, and I was tempted by some of these; but I was worried these would not be robust enough to support hose (its reasonably heavy, and the construction makes it act like an extended spring).

So I opted for an articulated bracket designed for a portable TV, which I was sure I could adapt to suit the hose.

Here is the TV bracket kit and it partially assembled.

I now had to devise a way to mount the bracket while giving me as wide a range of coverage as I could get. The Record Power Coronet Envoy has a built-in shelf under the lathe bed that I had hoped to make use of, but unfortunately it wasn’t the right height. But a couple of bits of timber screwed to the wall and an adjacent shelf worked out fine.

Then to attach the hose to the bracketry I bolted the plate designed to mount the TV directly to the dust collection hood, this could then be slotted on to the articulated bracket:

Now the articulated arms of the bracket together with the ability to tilt the angle of the hood, and the up & down adjustments of the whole arm means I can now position the hose to suit the majority of my turning positions.

And it has provided a suitable place for me to mount my magnetic lamp.

Unfortunately, the arm is not long enough to position the hose when I have the lathe head fully rotated through 90 degrees; but it is simple enough to unclip the hose and hood from the bracketry, which then allows me to route the hose across the lathe bed and support it on the redundant banjo/ tool rest.

So all in all a satisfactory result

Now I just need to go and make something else on the lathe!