Diy: A Fine Dust Water Filter For Fossil Prep

[ZiggieCie]

Diy: A Fine Dust Water Filter For Anyone Interested In Fossil Prep

We have many people posting questions about how to prep Fossils. Questions on the types of tools to use and how to use them. One of the most important questions that everyone needs to consider is how to control the huge amounts of very fine dust that is produced by some of the tools we use to prep fossils.

First is the Air Scribe, it uses compressed air and works like a smaller version of the Jackhammer used in construction. The air scribe produces a fair amount of stone chips and a moderate amount of dust. Having a setup to catch this dust is better than trying to clean it off everything in the area.

Next is one of our very important tools is the Air Abrader, mini-sandblaster. It also uses compressed air to force a very fine abrasive at the Fossil you are prepping and accurately erases matrix attached to the Fossil. All of these, from the small supply volume Paasche type air scribe, to the large volume Paasche remote air scribe and the professional COMCO units produce HUGE amounts of dust, which must be collected and controlled.

You must build or buy a workbox to do your air abrading in. A box with a viewing glass and sealed armholes to keep the dust from entering your workspace and “LUNGS”. This is very important and no way around it if you want to use an Air Abrader/mini-sandblaster.

Your blasting box will have a hole for attaching a vacuum too. You can use a shop vac for a few minutes if you buy an expensive drywall/cement dust filter, but the dust will quickly plug the filter. If you try to use the filter that comes with most shop vacs, the dust goes right through the filter; ruin’s your vac and blows dust everywhere.

The only positive way to solve this problem is to use a water filter to capture ALL of the dust produced.

The way they work is to pull the air through a container with a few inches of water in the bottom of a 5-gallon pail. The air intake is routed into the bottom of the 5-gallon pail with a plastic pipe from the intake port, into the water. This way the air bubbles through the water and the water captures the dust and the clean dust free air is than drawn through your vac and into the room. I use this system in my basement and have no dust showing on anything from it.

This first link is like the system I built and use. I find it pull’s some water out of the pail. It does filter out the dust, but I am going to change to a combination several units shown.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Drywall-Sanding-Dust-CollectorSeperator/

This has some interesting ideas in it and is going to be the model for my next water-filter.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1700535

This looks easy and should work fine. (I don't know why this video show here instead of the link, but it works.)

Another good looking design.

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/reader-tip/a-better-way-to-suck-up-drywall-dust.aspx

I hope this helps prepper's and future preppers With a very important safety issue.

Ziggie

[Ptychodus04]

Great resource. Thanks for sharing. Dust is certainly the bane of the fossil preparator! That and broken styli on their air scribes...