The real money looks to be in the picture framing business based on my sister's business. It's like a licence to print money for her.
A comparably sized frame made from Chinese injection-molded plastic seems to sell for $8.99 many places, with sales tax on top. My price includes the tax, so effectively it's only about 50 cents more than mass produced Chinese junk. I may try a launch price of $10 including the card and see what happens. At present I only have two such frames so I'll have to gauge interest and take things from there. I often figure if I can offer a hand-made product (especially with the whole "made in the USA" thing going) for only marginally more than Chinese plastic from Wally world I could be on to a good thing. Most of the wood I'm going to be using is oak, maple, cherry, maybe walnut. I've got hundreds of board feet of close-grained antique fir but I've got some other plans for that first. For larger frames I'm going to source some white oak and explore staining it and lacquering it. In one of the woodworking courses I signed up for there was an article about a guy who made frames out of plywood and sold them for $30. It can be hard to tell what people will pay, especially at craft shows. Sometimes people will balk at paying $2 for a photographic greetings card but then pay $5 for a cookie and $10 for a basket of fries. I once had a guy ask how much my framed print was (11x17 print in a solid metal frame) and when I told him it was $80 he handed me a $20. He said he thought I'd said $18 - apparently he thought I was going to sell him a solid metal frame with a print in it for less than half the price of a junky Chinese-made frame from Wally World. For a time I adjusted all my prices so the ended in -5 because however improbable it is that a vendor would sell a solid metal frame for less than a piece of plastic junk from China, there's no way you can hear "eighty five" or "seventy five" and claim you heard "eighteen". I get the impression that making picture frames isn't inherently difficult, it just involves enough stages that the average person would rather just pay someone than do it themselves. If you need to use a router to cut a rabbet out from the framing material, then a different router bit to put an edge on the material, then a miter saw to cut the corners, then glue it all together keeping everything straight, then stain as required and lacquer to protect it, it can take a surprising amount of time to make a single frame. Of course if someone doesn't already have the tools there's a barrier to entry right there. If there's enough interest in my frames I'll look into ways to lay out several of them at a time so I can cut them all to size, run them through the router all at once, change the bit and run them all through again, then glue a batch of them together all at once. Then when that batch is glued I can lacquer them all while the next batch glues. It should be easy enough to make a jig for my miter saw so I can cut standard size lengths quickly, easily and, most important of all, consistently.
Veritable kaleidoscope of possible changes. Now California beckons - return to the mission field(?). Overseer and publisher. Need to make a run soon. Things should become clearer by this Fall.
Needing to figure a way to collect the really fine dust from my plaster destruction. I killed my shop vac and would like to rig something together so my new shop vac doesn't suffer a similar fate.
Use someone else's shop vac. I don't know how to keep that drywall/plaster dust from killing vacs. And replacement filters/bags never seem to help, and I still end up blowing almost invisible particulate all over creation. I've killed two in the last 3 years, so I finally just buy the cheapo Home Depot "Bucket Head" and let it die a natural death.
I found a way that looks like it might just work. I just need another separator. The trouble with cyclonic separators and Thien heads and the like is that they are better described as chip extractors rather than dust extractors. Those pesky laws of physics that throw the particles to the side and then down into the separator work quite nicely for the larger chunks. They don't work so well for the finer dust, and the really fine dust gets sucked into the vac anyway. Then, as you say, the filters catch some of it and the rest gets into the motor or blown back into the air. HEPA bags catch it well, but once they start to fill up they get heavy and then they tear, letting the fine dust blow free and totally defeating their own purpose. The fine dust separator doodad looks much like a regular separator but has a long tube in and a short tube out. The long tube in goes to the very bottom, and the bottom of the container is then filled with water. The idea is that the air is sucked in and through, and the dust is caught in the water. So what I'm probably going to end up with from here is one separator to gather the big chunky stuff (although I might just use a dustpan to catch it, for ease), a separator with water in it to catch the fine dust, and then the powerful vac. Hopefully it will mean I don't need to worry about using HEPA filtration inside the vac.
I have used these to isolate rooms, thus keeping dust contained. Having done asbestos abatement, they are guite effective. Then I use gride & broom & brush for the bulk. Then vacuum only the residue. Still a hassle. I had once used these simultaneously on every door in a six- story building. Inhabited, not asbestos related.
Those look really useful, except in the room I'm working on I also need to block the dust from getting through gaps in the floor to the room below and from getting through the much larger gaps beside the floor, since the walls there are torn down as well. What I'm hoping to be able to do is just let the dust fall to the ground and then suck it up, rather than having to use a brush and then a vacuum. I got my hands on another bucket and some plumbing parts so I can make the water-based separator for fine dust I found online. Now I'm wondering whether it's a viable option to turn the body of the shop vac itself into a water based separator. It's got a drainage plug so it's clearly designed to clean up wet mess as well as dry mess so, if I can get things to fit into the existing attachments, maybe that's worth pursuing. It would certainly be easier to do that than to have another bucket, another hose etc, so I could have one separator to catch the large bits and another to catch the fine dust, with the shop vac trying to pull air through everything at once. It would be kinda nice to have some kind of double-chambered bucket so I could put a cyclonic separator in one half, feed the output of that straight into the other half with water in it, feed from there to the vac, and only need two hoses and one bucket floating about. But maybe I can work with just the vac. That would be kinda cool.
Thwarted again in my efforts to make the water trap. I decided to try and build it inside the shop vac, and found I was missing an elbow - my previous plan was to make a lid for a bucket and drill a hole through the top, hence I only needed one elbow. So I went to the hardware store and got myself another elbow. Then strung it all together, found my sealant won't seal to the plastic of the shop vac so making an airtight seal around everything is going to be tricky, but fired it up. And it turns out the suction of the shop vac is strong enough that the water splashes up to where the motor is, so I need to get the sleeve that is used for cleaning up a wet mess. I'm off to the hardware store again tomorrow.... It seems like it should work from what I've seen so far, I guess I'll find out tomorrow. Another downside is that the shop vac is quite big, so even a few inches of water in the bottom increases the weight by something like 20lb. But if it works it will be worthwhile. If not I'll build it into a bucket and put it all down to experience.
My wet separator kind of works. For a time it happily sucked up fine dust, but then it started blowing dust out of the exhaust vent. I lifted the top off the shop vac and found the water was very foamy inside. I think what's happening is the dust is making the water froth and foam, which in turn is allowing future dust to blow through it rather than being captured by it. One solution might be to add more water but that makes the thing heavy and unwieldy. If I can figure a way to attach a hose to the outlet at the bottom, put a valve on the end of the hose, and then tuck the house somewhere safe so it doesn't snag and pull off, maybe I can just lift the thing up onto a stand and then drain it out of the window. If I can do that then I can add more water and hopefully delay the foaming. I suspect a better solution, much as I don't like it as much, would be to use a brush and pan to gather up the worst of the dust and then use the vacuum to deal with the bits the brush doesn't catch. I think that will mean I can just press forward rather than spending ever-more time and money fighting with separators, when I think the problem is that I'm ultimately fighting the laws of physics. Maybe what I really need is a honking great container, maybe 1000 gallons or more, that sits outside with water in it and run a hose in and out from the house. That will take an age to get all foamy, which just leaves me needing to figure out how to get rid of 1000 gallons of dirty water in a hurry.
Just had an idea. I watch a show called Ask This Old House. It's done by the same crew as This Old House. Why not contact them, you can do it online. Their whole premise is answering peoples DIY questions. If you explain the problem to them they might have a solution.
I have a homeless friend that has been living in a tent in my back yard. A couple of his other friends found and purchased a small "shed" for him. It was built by a contractor. Is insulated, wired for electricity. Has a small AC unit and came with a twin bed. They also added a chest of drawers a tv and dvd player. It was delivered and set up yesterday. Now all he has to do is work on getting rid of the tent.