Dust-Up

There’s a time in any of my sanding sessions when so much dust accumulates in either the air or on my glasses (safety first!) that I can’t see what I’m sanding anymore. At this point, I usually have dust in my everything.  I take this as the construction god’s hint that it’s time to go watch some Judge Judy with Pharaoh.  (He loves Judge Judy, I can’t explain it.)

 

At this point my wood filler choice seems to have been a bad one. I tried to sand with the belt sander, but the belt was immediately clogged with the stuff.

 

Having more luck with the hand sander, but I’m still having to switch out the sandpaper every few feet. I’m sanding with 120 now, and finding every single scratch, nick, divot, hole, bump, and seam that I missed with the 80 grit.  Also, all of the marks I left with the putty knife are a pain in the rump, I should have been more careful about wiping them up or flattening them.

20 minutes of sanding the wood filler, and my hair is completely gray with dust. There’s not enough Judge Judy in the daytime for the amount of dust this stuff produces. As an example, here’s a picture of my dust mask after 2 days, next to a clean one.  The dust has worked its way all the way through the mask.

 

I’ve also just noticed that the wheel-less shop vac I’ve been dragging around the room to clean up dust has been leaving more scratches.  I think the floor is laughing at me.