"give chevrolet money"

That's hilarious, and oh-so-true.  I've often thought, especially in this age of digital displays, why don't they just tell you what's wrong?  Like "Replace Oxygen Sensor" or "thermostat stuck open" instead of "check engine".  

I once had a rough running engine and a "check engine" light, and I took it in to have the code read.  They came back with a "61" or something, and told me my power window motor was bad.  The car had manual crank windows.  (I'm not making this up)  When I pointed this out, they said, "Oh, it could also be your CGR gas recover valve on the exhaust", and that made a LOT more sense.  The solution was to pay them $200, to replace it, or to whack it with a hammer and knock the rust loose.  I chose the hammer, and it worked great!

Dust extraction for track saw

I went overboard and bought a Makita VC4710.  But I think a decent shop vac would do the job pretty much as good if you stick a hepa filter and bag in it.  The biggest annoyance is planning how the vac hose will move for each longer cut - if the hose gets caught and pulls off the saw mid cut things can get messy fast.  I’m working out something to hold the hose up over the bench so it can swing more freely as I cut, but I haven’t got a good solution done yet.   I’ve found that with the track saw as long as you make your cuts with a sacrifical piece underneath and the extractor running not very much dust escapes.

For the dust that does escape, I went for a cheap solution.  A 20” box fan, with a 20x20x4” MERV 13 filter duct taped to the side the air flows into.  For the small amount of dust that escapes the track saw, it does pretty well.

I have one of these and it

I have one of these and it works well, especially for the money.  Needs a Home Depot 5 gallon bucket.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dustopper-High-Efficiency-Cyclonic-Dust-Separator-12-in-Dia-with-2-5-in-hose-36-in-long-with-2-Sweep-Elbows-HD12A/315749552

Either get the dust extractor, or a lot of filters.

I do wood turning, and sawdust will plug the shop vacs filter very fast without the dust extractor.

About that calf

Athearn made a calf version of their SW7 (aka SW15).  The calf hood was just snapped in place of the cab.

A heard (Cow-calf-calf)

I've started putting together a "heard" as they are called.

http://www.kingstonemodelworks.com/TR3.html

Bernd

Heard on the forum

Awesome Bernd!! I wish I had that skill level. 

Apartment No No!

EW,

I could be wrong on this, since I have never used any dust collector systems, but after cutting up literally hundreds of Masonite splines for my current layout and seeing the HUGE amount of dust and fluffy sawdust that was produced, my advice to you is DON'T! I repeat, DON'T try to do this in your apartment! 

I have a hard time believing even the best of dust collectors would get everything, much less a homemade rig. I think you are going to find a fine layer of dust laying all over your apartment, no matter how hard you try to minimize it.  

I cut my splines inside of my garage, and almost wish I would have cut them outside on the driveway instead, but weather prevented that.  I'm still trying to clean dust out of everything. 

Take this advice or leave it, but as I think you told me a time or two...just sayin!  

RE: Further the Calf

I used one of those "calf-cabs" to make a TR6-B using a pair of Life Like Sw1200 as the basis for the units. Both are powered and are used to switch my Roseville yard. Attaching a photo. Sorry that it's a bit fuzzy but you get the idea of how it looks and works out. 

Espee over Donner

Well, people swear by the

Well, people swear by the dust extractors, but 99% still means 1% in the air, so I'll have to see. A track saw should make a little less dust in the first place than a table saw. And one of the things I wanted to do was get a fine kerf blade for it to reduce that further (people said I was overthinking the problem wanting a fine kerf blade to cut splines, but if I get one more spline piece per sheet and that much less sawdust that's significant)

The bedroom can be made into a dead-air space because of the way the air con system works - essentially it has its own dedicated unit, with air coming from the bedroom being returned only to the bedroom through ducts. Turn off the one AC and and there's no circulation at all, and nothing from the bedroom to the rest of the apartment.

My only other option is to do cutting out on the balcony. That's viable, as I have had electric plugs installed out there, and have sliding windows so I could get the sheets out and the splines back. In some ways that would be more convenient than the bedroom, but I'll have to be dragging everything in and out each time I want to do any cutting - can't be leaving stuff out there in the salt air, not to mention rain which blows in.

Before I start on the splines, I need to build the cutting table, and so I'll be making a few cuts in dimensional lumber for that, and I'll see how well the extractor works before I really get into spline production. 

The simple cyclone over a bucket is supposed to work well. But add a Thein baffle and it gets lots better. There are lots of DIY videos on the web if anyone is interested in that, just search youtube for Thein baffle dust extractor.

I have been looking into buying a hepa filter for the shop vac. It was one of the attractions of the dewalt (vs the more easy to get ridgid line) that dewalt has hepa filters available. Only not. The only merchant on amazon that can ship them to mexico is out with no known restock date (supply chain mess I suppose). 

OTOH, according to dewalt, the regular filter traps sawdust, the HEPA is for finer stuff like pollen. So I'll have to see. Trial and error. I could also buy a hose for the shop vac exhaust to run that outside if I open the window, dunno  how well that works. 

I have a 10' hose on order for the connection between the extractor and the saw, I hope that's enough to provide 8' of movement. If I locate the extractor on a shelf above the middle of the table it should be fine - but that's again assuming inside non-mobile location for the cutting operation. 

I'll live, learn and adapt. 

Gotta get my van back from the chevy dealer first. They claim the engine light called out the gas evaporation pressure valve. That sounds less expensive than a sensor, so I hope. But there's a long story about the vehicle control computer module. It's flaky, and it somehow flaked out when the service intake person was trying to read the mileage. I didn't see what she saw, but she said it was reading the wrong value (low) - then it corrected? We went back and forth a bit on what it should say, I've driven about 10,000 km since I bought it. Anyway, I didn't see that problem, but on my last trip I did have a problem starting that eventually disappeared, and might implicate the VCM also. I had it into a dealer in Laredo who had the car for 4 days and couldn't find any problem. So I've got some kind of flaky issue, and this dealer is probably going to hold the car for a few days and then give up, unless I just tell them to replace the VCM as a guess. Which I might do. I should post a whole thread on this so car people on the forum can give advice. There's a lot of knowledge here, even if it's off topic for trains.

Cyclones, filters and such.

Cyclones usually just remove the larger particles from the air flow. The quality of filter material  in the vac. determines what gets thru and back to the room air. I don't like to stir up the fine stuff too much so I usually carefully sweep up the chips and saw dust,trying to not get it airborne any more than necessary to get it in the dust pan.  With the floor clear of the larger particles I then run an upright bagless house vac over the floor to try and get the fine dust. My shop vac seems to have a less fine filter than the house vac. I do have to use the shop vac on the layout due to it's longer hose, but there's a lot less dust up there than on the floor....DaveB

just a thought

Could you just open a window and send the dust outside after the dust filter?   That might reduce the need (cost) for a hepa filter.    

Good luck with the van.   Issues like that make the luddite in me wish for a really old car.  

Hmmm!

I don't know if this will help, or pertain to you. But: I like to put a piece of cheese cloth over the vacuum hose to catch small parts that may get sucked up along with the dust. You could even put it between the hose and the actual vacuum, leaving all the dust and whatever in the hose itself. Easy to dump out outside. Keeps a lot of dust from being in the house. I take that messy hose outdoors and dump it on newspaper to search for any lost little goodies, like brake wheels, grab irons, coupler hoses, etc.

....

I lived the apartment life once....

First have the Masonite sheet cut down at the store, lengthwise, to the thinnest cut they will do on the panel saw.  6"?  Do it.

Now that you have your 6"x72" sheets, set up your saw on the balcony and do the cutting there.  Tear down after you blow the saw off with the vacuum and tuck it back inside.

The good news is that the 6" wide strips will only need two cuts each to make 2" spline,

You WILL be happier this way.

I note you do have a track saw, which means you may not need the store to cut down those big sheets.

van ok

I got the van back, they claimed it just needed a gas cap adjustment to make the light go out. I'd tried that myself, but all I did was make sure the cap was tight. Must have been a rumpled gasket or something. So they clipped me for the their $125 diagnostic fee and I got my van back. Very nicely washed. Oh well. I never did find out why it was refusing to start, until later on it got better. The issue with the mileage "going down" was I think due to the dealer taking it down wrong on the previous visit, a 9 for a 4 in the thousand's column. My best guess anyway.

Then the next day, last Tuesday, before I could make any progress on anything, I came down with a cold. I dragged myself off today to get a covid test because it had started to include a 1 degree fever, that was negative, so I just have to wait this out.

The dust extractor project is supposed to do a great job of collecting all the big chips, it's the very fine stuff that might go all the  way through the system that's the worry. I could definitely get another hose and connect it to the exhaust and run it outside. 

I bought a 10' aftermarket hose that came with a bunch of adapters hoping that it would have one that would work with the track saw, no luck. People on other forums basically say you just go to home depot and mcgiver something using the flexible rubber unions they have. The track saw dust port is 1.5" inside diameter and another 1/32" on each side for the thickness (1 9/16" outside diameter). The hose has a 1 7/8" adapter, that's close.

So when I get over all this cold I have to go buy wood and build the table and try to find adapters to hook up the dust piping and build a dust extractor Thein baffle thing. 

I'm pretty sure I can work something acceptable out for the dust eventually. I'd like to get that HEPA filter for sure. I might have to buy it from a place that only ships to the US, have it sent to my mail forwarder, and pay for them to ship it to me. That will cost me more for the shipping than the filter, but that might be the only way to get one here.

Why would a table say make

Why would a table say make more saw dust theh a track saw?  You have the same size kurf being turned into saw dust.  

-Doug M

Same amount of dust...

... but a well designed Track Saw is extracting it way closer to the source.  

not the same

First of all, it's not the same size kerf.

- A standard table saw blade has a kerf of 1/8" or .125". 

- whereas the makita track saw standard blade that came with my saw has a kerf of .073"

- A thin kerf table saw blade has a kerf of 3/32" or .09375" - still thicker than a standard track saw blade. 

- And there are thin kerf track saw blades available with a kerf of 1.5mm (.059")

And second, with a track saw the blade is better contained in a housing that captures the sawdust better. It's not a circular saw that sends the dust all over the place.

And the blade rotation on a track saw is up into the wood from below, meaning the sawdust is ejected into the area covered by the blade housing, which is spun around and out the exhaust by the blade's own rotation in addition to the vacuum suction.

Most people using track saws who care where the sawdust goes use tape to cover the window for changing the blade so sawdust doesn't fly out the side. Nearly all the dust created can be captured.

In addition, a table saw sends some sawdust up in the air toward your face (most goes down into the table saw). Because most track saw cutting is done on top of a solid sacrificial surface that the blade cuts slightly into, there's no way for sawdust to escape down, it all gets swept up into the housing.