Woodworking Dust Masks

Never say "no" to a dust mask. Among woodworkers, the chances of developing nasal and sinus cancer run up to 40 times greater than non-woodworkers. Although researchers haven't identified the exact cancer-causing compound, some evidence points to the dust generated from sanding wood with a high tannin content, such as chestnut, redwood, western red cedar, hemlock and oak!
Always use the dust collection option on your sanders and work in a well ventilated area. The inhalation of fine wood dust from sanding can have many effects on the respiratory tract, including: a runny nose, violent sneezing, stuffed up nose, nose bleeds and even nasal cancer. Asthma is another concern...most wood dusts can irritate the respiratory tract provoking asthma attacks in those individuals that develop allergies to wood dust.

For information on Wood Toxicity, check out the following links:
1. www.woodturner.org and look under "Resources"
2. Greater Vancouver Woodturners Guild Wood/Dust Toxicity Article

If you are interested in purchasing a new dust mask or respirator--do your research. Face masks depend on good contact between the skin and the mask for their effectiveness, and you want to find a style that is comfortable to work in! A few of our customers have recommended the masks made by www.aosafety.com

For more information on sanding and sanding products, check out our website
www.abrasiveresource.com

Paint Your Car At Home

Did you see the April, 2006 issue of Car Craft Magazine? The cover story is "Paint your Car at Home", and it's all about how expensive it is these days to do paint and bodywork on a car. The author, Jeff Smith, writes:

"Today, the cost of materials can easily run $2000 and up if you want to use top-notch materials and do the job right. Labor cost? Expect to pay $60 per hour minimum. So, this leaves the budget-beleagured car crafter with one alternative--do it yourself. You've probably heard all this before, but it demands repeating. The key to a quality paint job is all in the prep work before any color ever finds its way onto the car."

The article goes on for 6 more pages, detailing every aspect of painting your car at home, with lots of good, detailed photographs. Best of all, what a pleasant surprise to find Abrasive Resource listed at the end of the article as one of their material suppliers! Since they gave our website a "shout out", we will do the same...

If you are interested in purchasing a back issue of Car Craft Magazine, simply go to www.carcraft.com and click on the link for "Back Issues". Click on Car Craft in the left navigational bar and then scroll down the page until you find April, 2006!

The sanding discs used for refinishing the '65 El Camino in this article can be found at www.abrasiveresource.com

Abrasive Belt Burning

The Wood Machinery Manufacturers of America have a new e-mail newsletter called "Productivity Tips". It is going to be a series of six e-newsletters dedicated to helping professional woodworkers improve productivity, quality, safety and ultimately, the bottom-line of their businesses. It is presented in a Q & A format and the answers are supplied by resident experts of WMMA companies.

Here's a question that particularly caught our attention:


Q. My abrasive belt is loading up and burning quickly, what am I doing wrong?
A. You're either trying to remove too much stock for the grit of belt you are using, or you are running the feed too fast. Basically, there are three types of belts, including: abrasive planning (grits from 24 through 60), light calibrating belts (grits from 80 through 120) and finishing belts (grits from 150 through 220 or more). Each grit type is designed to remove a specific amount of stock at a certain feed rate.

For instance, a 100-grit belt can remove 0.025 inch on oak at 20 feet per minute. If you push beyond these parameters, the belt will load up and burn your product. A rough guideline is to use abrasive planning belts if your stock removal is 0.060 inch or more, calibrating belts for stock removal from 0.012 inch to 0.050 inch and finishing belts for no more than 0.005 inch stock removal (at around 20 feet per minute).

The expert in this case was Tim Mueller, Marketing Director at Timesavers, Inc.

If you would like more information on the Wood Machinery Manufacturers of America, their website is at www.wmma.org

If you are interested in obtaining high quality sanding belts for woodworking, visit our website at www.abrasiveresource.com