By Ken Schulte
You would not think that adding
something simple like compressed air
to your workshop would be like adding
a drill press or a miter saw.
But after adding one, you will wonder
how you can live without it. Once you
have an air compressor, you will be
amazed at how handy it really is.
I cannot believe how many
opportunities become available once
you have it.
First off you can always be better at
keeping your tires on your car at the
proper inflation, and then there are all
the kids� bikes and toys. But you will
notice right away that you will use it to
keep your shop cleaner.
I really like the way it keeps my router table clean.
Cleaning out the area where the insert rests helps
keep the wood flat on the table when you are routing.
A few short bursts into the collet does nothing but
great things. Having a clean collet will motivate you
to make sure it does not get gummed up and become
hazardous.
I then take the router out of the table and blast the
inlet of the router out. I also make sure the switch of
the router is blasted. If you have ever owned a
Bosch router, you know that the switch can get
gummed up and become inoperative.
I find that when I start to use good cleaning
techniques with the compressed air it compels me to
do more routine maintenance to the router in
general. We all know the value of a having a well
taken care of finely tuned motor.
I started with a small 4 gallon pancake
compressor and purchased a nice hose wheel to
keep the hose under control. A little bit of creative
plumbing and I had a pretty nice rig with 50 feet of
hose. Soon afterwards however I noticed that the
smaller compressors are limited from their size but
more so that they cycle on and off more frequently.
No problem at first, but after a while it does get
annoying.
Moving up to a larger unit usually solves the
problem but can be a little more of a hit to the
pocket book. Obviously, if you can spend a little
more early on, you�re better off.
Another way to increase volume is to add some
plumbing to your shop while building some
dedicated air stations to your shop.
When you add some fixed copper pipe to your
shop, you add volume to your tank. This in turn
adds capacity and reduces the cycle time of the
compressor.
Does it add a lot? Probably not a whole lot, but it
will depend on how big your shop is. Once you
plumb the shop, if you decide to get a bigger
compressor, you can use the same plumbing.
You will be surprised how much difference it really
makes and the convenience it adds to your
workspace.
Creativity
You can really get creative in how you integrate the
air into your shop. Creativity is part of
woodworking. Coming up with new ideas to solve
problems is half the fun and half the reason why we
buy woodworking magazines.
If you have some basic plumbing knowledge, more
doors will open for you. Make life interesting, you
can take compressed air and use it in conjunction
with your dust collection. I have seen some pretty
neat rigs on drill presses which are down right
ingenious.
By having a permanent nozzle outlet fixed to a
swivel and then mounted on your drill press, you
can use short bursts of air to move wood into the
your dust collection port.
If you can rig a foot switch, you will have a hands
free operation. Anyone using a forstner bit knows
how handy it would be to have some short bursts of
air cleaning out the hole while you�re drilling it.
Hopefully this has spurred on your imagination to
use compressed air all around your shop. The
opportunities are endless.
2006 Copyright Protected
This article is not to be reprinted
