Re: Item Detail

Looking at that setup makes me think you could make your own system for much less. Just use a hepa air filter system exhausting in to a box with the hose connected. Or maybe I'm missing something important, but I'm guessing not. But for those who just want to spend the money and have a ready to use system I suppose this would be a good option. I just don't see 1/2 a boat buck as cheap for that system.

Sun Oct 20, 2013 2:30 pm (PDT) . Posted by:"mitchelman" mm_kortjester Looking at that setup makes me think you could make your own system for much less. Just use a hepa air filter system exhausting in to a box with the hose connected. Or maybe I'm missing something important, but I'm guessing not. But for those who just want to spend the money and have a ready to use system I suppose this would be a good option. I just don't see 1/2 a boat buck as cheap for that system. ----- Maybe, but I have enough to do right now just to get started on our boat. I look at all tool purchases as an investment for the future, which is why I would prefer to pay more for reliable tools than less for something I will throw away and replace in the future. I plan to hand all of my tools down to my grandson, who is a mechanic by trade and can more or less do just about anything. This will be yet another useful thing that he can either use or sell someday. And I am pretty sure I will get well more than my $400 out of it when the time comes to tear Play Mate's sole out and rebuild her from the bottom up. Just ten day's at 8 hours per day sets the price at five bucks per hour, and after that it starts to approach the pennies per day level -- money well spent for safety AND comfort during next summer in southern Alabama! Best Regards, *Bradley A. Bates* Play Mate -- Cal-29 Br… [at] gmail.com

On 10/21/2013 11:35 AM, Brad Bates wrote: > . I look at all tool purchases as an investment for the future, which > is why I would prefer to pay more for reliable tools than less for > something I will throw away and replace in the future. Many years ago when I was living on a very small income, I needed a 1/2" drive socket wrench ratchet to get the oil drain plug out of my Oldsmobile engine. I went to a discount store and bought a ratchet handle for $3.00. It worked perfectly and reliably. I kept it in a little tool box of traveling tools that lived in my car. Used it all the time. When somebody broke in and stole the little box, I tried again--bought another cheapo ratchet handle, at the inflationary price of $9.00 or so. Not worth a damn. Cheap tools are mostly a gamble. Chris Campbell

I'm always interested in creative ways to save money on stuff you won't use every day, and/or cob together stuff that doesn't even exist on the tool shelves. I built an air powered long board out of an inline sander (from an auto supply house) and some mahogany door skins and fiberglass. The "shoe" that I built used sanding disk adhesive to hold a sheet of wet/dry sandpaper split in half. I had a 4" X 22" flexible board that I could dribble water on to keep the mess down. A few cheap irrigation fittings and I had a mist sprayed in just the right place. On a hot day, I could fair the boat and not have to wear a respirator, plus what mist I encountered just cooled me off some. It worked great, but I did not anticipate that the additional mass of the shoe would destroy the in line sander in short order. So I built another lighter shoe with carbon fiber and less door skin. It ate up a new sander in short order. I popped for a more expensive sander and transferred the long board over….. it lasted longer, but bit the dust too. A little math and I realized that I could go through three $39 sanders in the time that it took to destroy one $189 sander, so that's what I did. I guess my point is, that research and development takes time and money to accomplish and some times its cheaper to buy something that the bugs are worked out of. In my case, I couldn't find a product that did what I wanted and I spent several hundred dollars getting it to work -- and it was worth it. If you have a hepa filter system and want to test it out and let us know, that would be cool, but my gut feeling is that by the time you buy the hose and fittings and cob together some kind of air tight hood and straps to hold it from collapsing then maybe you discover that it takes more air than you think to push positive flow through a 40' hose and you've spent a couple of hundred bucks for nothing. You will also discover that the plastic face plate has to be crystal clear and needs peel-off covers to keep it from getting hazed and you have to re-invent those too. $400 starts to seem cheaper as you get into it, and the first of those air units were priced at around $700 as I recall and have come down dramatically. Wilkie On Oct 21, 2013, at 8:35 AM, Brad Bates <br… [at] gmail.com> wrote: > > > Sun Oct 20, 2013 2:30 pm (PDT) . Posted by:"mitchelman" mm_kortjester > > Looking at that setup makes me think you could make your own system for much less. Just use a hepa air filter system exhausting in to a box with the hose connected. Or maybe I'm missing something important, but I'm guessing not. But for those who just want to spend the money and have a ready to use system I suppose this would be a good option. I just don't see 1/2 a boat buck as cheap for that system. > ----- > > Maybe, but I have enough to do right now just to get started on our boat. I look at all tool purchases as an investment for the future, which is why I would prefer to pay more for reliable tools than less for something I will throw away and replace in the future. I plan to hand all of my tools down to my grandson, who is a mechanic by trade and can more or less do just about anything. This will be yet another useful thing that he can either use or sell someday. > > And I am pretty sure I will get well more than my $400 out of it when the time comes to tear Play Mate's sole out and rebuild her from the bottom up. Just ten day's at 8 hours per day sets the price at five bucks per hour, and after that it starts to approach the pennies per day level -- money well spent for safety AND comfort during next summer in southern Alabama! > > Best Regards, > > Bradley A. Bates > > Play Mate -- Cal-29 > Br… [at] gmail.com > > >