Shop Vac

While I was working on a project this weekend (curved oak stair nosings for a church I am building--more on that later), I was forced to perform a most dreaded shop chore--emptying the shop vac.  There are many problems with shop vacs, some of which can be improved, some, one must live with.  I use two vacs in the shop: one dedicated to the miter saw for dust collection powered through a triggered switch that powers up when I start the saw and runs a few seconds after I release the saw trigger.  This vac is buried behind the saw stand and thankfully doesn't require emptying often due to its exclusivity.  My other vac gets used for dust collection on the router table and also for general shop cleanup, so it sees much more use.  I have my router table wired with a 30 AMP switch that activates the internal outlet that the router is plugged into and an external outlet that the vac is plugged into so that they come on simultaneously, like the miter saw.


The multi-use vac is mounted on a light duty convertible dolly, the type that looks handy when one acquires it, but ultimately is of little use.  I am lucky enough to have received two of these dollies from individuals who became tired of looking at them.  One is dedicated to my recycling totes and the other has become the bottom half of my shop vac.

You might be thinking "hey, most shop vacs come with wheels".  If you are really thinking, you would finish that thought with "that aren't worth a damn".  If the wheels aren't yet broken, they are the perfect size for tripping over any object that you would find on the ground at any given time, including the vac's own cord.  This usually results in a tipped over vac or a dislocated hose, or both, and at the moment you are experienced the most weakened good humor.  The dolly's large rear wheels and good pivoting ability greatly reduce both hazards.

But, in order to keep the vac on the dolly, I have bungied it front and rear.  This adds another step to the already irritating process of emptying the thing.  This process begins when you realize that you have no more suction.  You take off the top and dust floats gently into your nostrils.  You unscrew the filter retainer and pull the filter off its stanchion, causing another cloud.  Then you must knock the caked dust off the filter into the vac, which is a major mess, so you leave the filter in the vac and drag the whole unit to your dumping point, which is for me, the woods  (shut up, I'm composting).  On the way, the many useless attachments that are handily mounted onto the vac fall off, leaving a trail.  In my particular case, the man-door to the back yard is partially blocked to accommodate my storage needs.  It opens enough for a man to pass through, but not a man with a clump of shop vac.  This means I must go around through the overhead door to the back, which is blocked by a nifty stone wall, effectively making the trip one for which you may want to pack a lunch.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany.  After a particularly rigorous encounter with a too long neglected vac, it occurred to me that I could simply put a plastic garbage bag in the vac so that emptying it is a matter of lifting out the bag, which can then go into a garbage can, or fit through the back door with me to be emptied in the compost heap without disconnecting and wrestling with the entire apparatus.

Life is full of simple pleasures.

The Pook Age 0 to 4

Several years ago I was noodling around with a few gadgets I acquired over the years and ended up with a few musical compositions.  Using a BOSS 8 track digital recorder and a Yamaha digital sequencer, I dubbed in a few guitar chords and some melody lines using various guitars.  These recordings were one take spontaneous experiments--no actual composing was done; I simply laid in a basic sequence or chord progression, then a melody track.

This particular track was pretty organic.  Although I lined-in an acoustic/electric Taylor 714CE in order to get a bit of chorus for the chord progression, I mic'd the melody line using a condenser mic with a little delay effect in the mixer.  I played the melody with a Taylor NS something or other--a nylon stringed classical guitar (which is my favorite because it doesn't hurt my hands to play big chords--I have some sort of affliction in my left hand that has always made it hard to hold the necessary pressure on bar chords--no matter how much I have played over the years, I have never gotten past that--big impediment that the classical set up eases tremendously due to less string tension).  The fancy equipment has all the necessary gadgetry to mix a much better recording, but requires more than an hour or so at a time to learn how to use and I have yet to invest the effort.  Some day.  In the meantime, raw is what I get.

The kids were not yet born when I made the recordings, so there is no connection.  Honestly, I have simply been trying to figure out how to post audio to this site and the only way I have found so far is to create a video.  Shows you how the world is changing, eh?  In the high school garage band days, our state of the art recordings were direct to one track cassette through a "boom box" with built in mic.  Heady days.  Its just as well, though--better technology would not have served our style and abilities.

The Rock-Preamble

Many years ago, I'm not sure how many, my uncle (the one who has the country place that no one knows about) set about the daunting task of building a major earth dam across a huge ravine that had been carved out over many decades of watershed.  By design, this dam created a pretty little pond that is spring fed and full of blue gills who think they are piranha.  In the process of creating this little Walden, a very large flat limestone rock was unearthed.  By large, I mean 12' square, roughly, by about 12" thick, more or less.  As the legend goes, a very large dozer puffed mightily as it pushed this leviathan up from the depths of the hole.  The operator shoved it up next to an old tree (I really should know what kind of tree, but I cant recall), and there it sat for several years.  The pond filled quickly, we sowed some grass, and today it looks as if it was always there.

But the rock taunted me, laying there year after year, looking quite out of place and useless.  Many beers were drunk while imagining a use for this rock.  It is not particularly striking in any way except in its size.  Certainly not the type of rock one would buy to add to the landscape of his home.  It really only has one quality: persistence in its vocation (that of being a big rock).    But I could not be in its vicinity without it catching the corner of my eye, laying there all smug.  It did not belong there.  It knew it. We all knew it.  And year after year it dared us to do something about it.

The problem one has with monoliths is Newtonian in nature.  The whole mass at rest thing is problematic proportionate to the mass.  This is compounded by economic principles that dictate that the relative value of a relocated rock times the expenditures of moving it equals folly.  Consequently, using a crane or enormous track-hoe was out of the question.  Still, it beckoned.  There is something very basic in the nature of man that compels us to dash ourselves against rocks.  History has no shortage of examples.  And so over many years of careful inebriation we finally came to the only possible conclusion:  the rock must become a picnic table.  And to be certain we properly honored our ancestors, it must become a picnic table 30 feet to the right.


We decided to get Egyptian on its ass.

To be continued...