Working with pine

[lwhughes149]

I see some beautiful pieces of furniture made with pine however when I have used pine in my dust system it clogged up the pipes. I have recently removed the copper wire, maybe the pine wouldn't be a problem now. Thought I would get some feedback from you guys and girls as to what your experience has been.

 

[DavidF]

I see some beautiful pieces of furniture made with pine however when I have used pine in my dust system it clogged up the pipes. I have recently removed the copper wire, maybe the pine wouldn't be a problem now. Thought I would get some feedback from you guys and girls as to what your experience has been.

No problems here with pine, but I have heard that the grounding wire can cause a gradual build up. There are many schools of thought that say it is un-nessesary anyway in small shop system.

 

[D L Ames]

Lorraine, removing the wire from the inside of your duct as you did will surely help in relieving some of the problems you had in the past with the clogged pipes. Keep in mind that you will have more pitch build up on your cutters and blades when you work with pine.

D L

 

[jeff...]

I personally think the real key to working with pine is to ensure it's at around 8% mosture content. The pine lumber borught from a lumber yard is usally stored outside. Pine, more so than most other species of lumber has a tendency to suck up mosture from the envrioment it's stored in and adjust it's MC to it's enviroment faster than say hardwood will.

Just for grins, take a mosture meter to your favorite lumber yard and measure the MC of their kiln dried lumber. it would'nt surprise me at all if you found pine to be at 16% or more. At that mosture level you'll get sticky pine dust and chips from your machines no matter what you try...

Solution may be to sticker pine in the shop along with a dehumidifer, cover with a tarp and run the dehumidifer till it sucks the moisture out of the lumber, goal is lumber at 6-8% MC. That should help matters greatly....

 

[lwhughes149]

I hadn't thought about the moisture content being too high, that is interesting. Removing the ground wire has been a noticable difference overall for me. My mentor says shock isn't the issue with the ground but explosion. I am assuming that my system is small enough to be safe. I guess for now I will stick with the hardwoods and leave the pine alone. Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate your time. Lorraine:-o

 

[NCPete]

no reason to skip working with pine, if you have a special project for it, heck, all I have in my shop right now IS pine. And explosion won't be an issue in a homeshop, but I might start running an external ground if the DC system is causing you discomfort.