My friend is a professional builder and does a bit of engineering, motor mechanics, and sometimes a bit of carpentry. He built his own garage, an extension to his house, with bedrooms above it. His garage is storage space for his professional power tools and also a workspace, although on dry days he often works outside. He even built his own concrete driveway. His use of wood around the garage makes it feel warm and the sort of place you’d like to spend some time fixing your car, or cutting some wood, or just having a cup of tea. But he doesn’t quite seem to be able to manage the dust from his woodwork. Professional power tools and dust don’t go well together.
He always does a really good job whatever the project he is working on. He gets on with the job without fuss and usually very quietly even when he is using usually noisy tools. Everything is neat and tidy by the end of the job, apart from maybe a little bit of dust. But in his own garage he doesn’t seem to be bothered about all the mess he creates from his work. It just gets brushed to the side. Every so often he will have a blitz clear out, but within days, sometimes just within hours, the place is messy again. And all the while, dust is accumulating. Some of his power tools that he doesn’t use very much have such a thick layer of dust over them that they just appear as shapes. There’s no visible writing or colour to them, apart from the dust. They look surreally antiquated, or like replica toys.
Maybe the dust does bother him, and he considers it a waste of valuable time to have to keep dusting. Maybe he doesn’t notice it, or feel obliged to keep the dust off his tools because he knows he will dust them off when he needs to use them. But surely he must be aware that dust can damage power tools and getting a dust extractor would be a valuable investment?
Perhaps he half notices the dust but then keeps putting off doing the dusting because its just a job he only does if he really has to, such as when he’s working for someone else? Well rather than try and work out why he leaves his garage dusty so much of the time I’m just going to buy him a dust extractor as a gift. One of the reasons I want to do this is because he did me a favour helping me with a building project and recently doing some welding on my car exhaust.
Hopefully with dust management taken care of by an easy to use professional dust extractor his jigsaws and hammer drills will stay in professional working order, he will be happier in his work garage, and maybe anyone visiting will find the clean air to their satisfaction, just like the work he does.