I do both woodworking (for a living) and metalwork (as a new hobby.) Should I have separate sanders for wood and metal? I'm not too concerned about the wood being damaged, but I wonder about the risks of sparks in the sawdust.
The same is true about vacuums. A separate one for swarf and dust off of the 2 x 42 belt?
Sparks will ignite the dust in a belt sander. It's happened to me a few times but isn't a big deal since there really isn't much to burn in there. I suppose a dust collection system would take care of the issue, but I don't really do enough wood working to justify it. It might be worthwhile for you though.
Tom
Just be careful with your metal sanding. Don't mix iron particles with aluminum particles otherwise you may get some very damaging excitement.
Ed
(09-04-2012, 10:38 AM)EdK Wrote: [ -> ]Just be careful with your metal sanding. Don't mix iron particles with aluminum particles otherwise you may get some very damaging excitement.
Ed
It might need to be rusty iron to result in thermite, but that would definitely do a number on the old belt sander.
Tom
You can actually make thermite out of...other things than just rust. I would say clean the saw dust off as best you can before doing metal and I would think that you would be ok.
Nah. John probably just wants to weld up that loose rail down at the crossing.
Thermite is pretty fun but nowhere near the coolest thing I have gotten to make, at least in my opinion. Making your own blasting caps is super cool but NOWHERE near legal...unless the government is paying for you to do it.
Look up Sidney Alford sometime. He has (or at least had) a school you could go to and make all sorts of fun things that go boom. It's probably like 100K pounds or something to go though
