Shop Cleaning

[TYRONEEZEKIEL]

How do y'all keep your work areas clean? It seems like any time I get charcoal out of my mill, or do anything with charcoal in general, my whole garage is just blanketed in a nice even coat of dust. Ive layed newspaper down, ive had a vacuum going by my screens.

 

 

Anyway, what are the tried and true secrets of shop cleanliness?

[NightHawkInLight]

I keep my tables as clear as possible so they can easily be wiped down, and I keep any chemicals with incompatibilities in separate rooms so that dust from one does not settle on the other. Anything that is extremely dusty I will try to work with outdoors. As far as charcoal goes, it has no common pyro incompatibilities, and so the dust does not concern me.

[Sabdacrab]

In my shed/workspace I have an exhaust fan (similar to that of a rangehood) that takes care of most of the wayward charcoal particles.

[Mumbles]

My main concern with charcoal dust is that it's pretty much identical looking to Black powder dust. I speak from experience that working indoors is a terrible idea in the first place. My area was clean, and I did plenty of damage. I'd hate to see what would have happened if it wasn't.

 

When I worked at the commercial plant cleaning was fairly easy. The mixing room was set up like a fairly normal garage. I bet the room was maybe 15x20. Shelves lined the walls with drum of chemicals, or garbage cans with bagged chemicals. One end had a garage door, and all others had some sort of door. To clean after mixing we typically did a crude sweep up of the floors and tables. Then we took an airgun on a compressor and blew as much of the area clean as we could. I typically worked my way top to bottom in the room. Starting with the top of the shelves and the table, and then blowing or sweeping the rest out one of the doors the best I could. This was usually good enough between different batches of compatible compositions. If we were going to mix up a chlorate or AP composition, we'd then go through and wipe down all the surfaces and mop the floor. We also did this at the end of every working day. Every month or so we went through and gave everything a thorough cleaning by moving all the barrels and stuff. This may sound like a lot of work, but unless I was doing the mopping and wiping of all the surfaces, the whole thing took less than 15 minutes.

 

In my own shop, I tried to keep the working surfaces fairly clean so that they can be wiped off fairly easily. A coat of sealant or paint really helps a lot including on any floor material you have. There are some non-static floor coatings that would be excellent for concrete floors.

[dan999ification]

minimize the mess in the first place, clean evry time you work or make mess, if you go crashing around or even moving fast and impatiently charcoal will quickly get evrywhere, you must be calm precise and patient, powder should slide off scoops rather than being dumped from a height, let mill jars settle before opening them and screen small batches at a time if you can.

disposable work surfaces, scoops/spoons and measuring cups, and again clean evry time you make mess, unless you are in business and have a large ish manafacture plant i dont think its too much trouble to set up and strip down evrytime.

sharing property probably helps with my cleanliness but if you stopped by my place you would never know .

 

dan.

[allrocketspsl]

fortunately in florida I can do all outside most of the time,I never mix anything inside not even anything just a code I have.Clean clean clean,my shop gets clean before any project and during and after!Sweep everyday nothing much on my workspace all chems sealed in plastic bags then inside a canister like you get from slim fast then put in boxes !Make a check list and USE it!!!Of course oxidisers in one box well you get what I mean.Its a state of mine when you do this hobby always expecting the worst to happen so you can prevent! Edited December 28, 2011 by allrocketspsl

[dagabu]

Clean, clean, clean....

 

I press rockets and there is dust from the nozzles and fuel, I make BP, there is charcoal, I make stars, again, comp all over.

 

I took a small pile of the dust that I had collected from shelving 7' off the floor and put a torch to it and it burned just like BP! Floor sweepings are almost as bad and do burn with vigor. My hope is to get upper cabinets that go to the ceiling and then only have table tops to clean so that I can remove the dust with a damp cloth.

 

In fact, I have to do a complete wipe down after the first... Yuck!

 

-dag

[Potassiumchlorate]

I mix the compositions outside except for small/experimental compositions. Especially BP I don't even handle much indoors at all.

[NightHawkInLight]

Another good practice is to throw down about half a gallon of water on the floor of your workshop before starting. This will raise the humidity to reduce static, and also collect and tame all the dust that comes into contact with the floor. That should greatly reduce the amount of free dust that is able to collect on other surfaces. The floor can then be mopped up or hosed off whenever required.

[warthog]

Even in Indiana in the winter I tend to work outdoors. Makes the cleaning a lot easier for me. I also don't do near as much in the winter as I do in the warmer times because of this practice. Remember that most of the time at least, the finer your chemicals are the better the composition works when mixed. So when you work inside it isn't just charcoal that gets everywhere, it is EVERYTHING you are using that gets everywhere and that is a recipe for disaster IMO since it can't all be cleaned up.

 

About he only thing I will do indoors routinely is making shells. After I have the strs and such in place, I take the hemis outdoors to put my booster into them, tape them shut then go back in to paste them. If I am making plastic, then I glue them shut outside and bring them back in to dry. I use a bar clamp or more than one if needed to hold the tightly shut until the glue is set up.

 

I always clean up after I finish whatever process I am doing. After I put away the chemicals, I wash all of the tools I used, burn the kraft paper I worked on and hose off the table, the dry it and fold it back up and lean it back against the garage. I also like to spray water all around the area to water in any stray powders or what not that I wasn't able to clean otherwise.

 

So to answer, anything that will be dusty is done outdoors or waits until it can be done outdoors.

[oldguy]

I have a 2 X 4 ft fume hood over my work bench, I work under. Updraft fan motor is a grounded TEFC type, so no worry about sparks from the fan. I installed a hepa grade filter on it. Whenever the filter material starts looking a medium to dark gray, I remove it, take it outside & hose it off. Then let it air/sun dry.

 

I keep old cotton sheets covering about everything & when they start to get funky gray looking, I run them through the washing machine, then hang them on a clothes line to dry.

Every so often, I open the doors & windows, put on a respirator, crank up the air compressor & blow the ceiling, walls and floor down & all the dust out.

 

I run bulk charcoal I cook myself & feed it through a garden shredder/mulcher covered with a damp cotton sheet outside, then fine crush & screen it outside, as that is a REAL dirty job. I also ball mill the charcoal outside & empty the jars of air float into big ziplock freezer bags outside. When I first started pyro, I knocked a coffee can full of air float off my work bench. That took 2 days of cleaning to get rid of. Lesson learned there.

 

 

[TYRONEEZEKIEL]

These are all great ideas. I definitely do try to work outside when I can, its just so dang windy here where I am from, so it makes it pretty tough to get out sometimes. I think I may just start taping newspapers down to my table, then fold it in on itself when I finish for the day and dispose of it. I think my biggest problem is just the charcoal dust that occurs from cooking, crushing, milling, and screening.

[50AE]

I minimize dust by mixing bright Al/charcoal comps in plastic bags. The less nasty chemicals are screened separately, while the two others don't need to be screened.

 

I lay recycled kraft sheet on the working surface, so it's easy to clean afterwards. I don't throw away the dirty sheets, but I recycle them to make vacuum hemis.

 

Any suspicious powder or chemical is either tested or just thrown away. If I have charcoal spilled on my table and have the slightest doubt it could be BP, I mop everything.

 

Settling dust is nasty, but it's mostly bright Al or charcoal. Most oxidizers are quite heavy to get airbone.