Thrifty Alternatives ..Building Foam Campers

[eaglesdare]

well i am not moving back to the foamie topic yet......i finally got a diamond ring! yup he who must obey went to zales. this probably does not mean much to you folks, but actually its a big deal.
short story: my birthday is in april, so i have the diamond as my birth stone, that and i love diamonds. i had several diamond rings handed down to me from my mom and others i bought. since i met the old man the only thing i ever said i wanted was a diamond ring. a REAL diamond ring. he has gotten me several jewelery pieces but never the diamond, and never anything i liked (for example once he got a FAKE brown stone bracelet, and once he got a FAKE kids diamond heart necklace). for almost 19 1/2 yrs all i have said was diamonds, and i did not care if they were chips, just as long as they were real. (now he did get a really nice ring once from when he was stationed in bahrain, but we had a house break in and most of my jewelery was stolen, including this one nice ring).
so i open a huge box, only to have another box inside deal. got all the way down to a bag that said zales, and i started to get scared, then the last box and i was really afraid to open it, but open it i did and it was funny, because all 8 sets of eyes were on me! well hubby did good, it was a diamond ring! all chips, but all REAL! i do have to take it back for sizing though, but i love it!
i just had to share that little bit of info with you guys and gals.

ok, now you can get back to the topic of foam.

[GPW]

Eagle !!! Well deserved !!! Hmmm? Diamond shaped Foamies ‘ ...

[Wobbly Wheels]

some type of (thrifty) sanding tool that could be attached to the shop vac...

I took a heat gun to the end of my shop vac's hose, softened it, and reshaped it to fit the odd-shaped outlet on my palm sander. A bit of duct tape was all it cost me...when I was done, I softened it again and plugged the hard wand section back in to get it back to the original shape. No long term effects to the plastic at all.

Now I use a short chunk of central vac pipe as an adapter. That's 2" pvc, but it's a much thinner wall than pvc pipe so it's easier to shape. IIRC, it was less than a buck a foot. I used a heat gun and a funnel to stretch the 2" to fit inside the 2 1/4" vac hose, and shaped the other end to fit the sander (a la vac hose above).

I don't see why you couldn't adapt it to a manual sanding board - though you'd have to drill holes through the board after the paper's glued on. It should be easy enough to shape a vac manifold from the pipe with a bit of heat.

[GPW]

W2... That’s a cool idea !!! Have to work on that !!! the belt sander with the collection bag worked OK , but hand sanding made all the fine dust ... got it everywhere ( ) , then tracked it in the house ... which was NOT appreciated by “she who must not be named” ... ...

[bonnie]

how about this?

http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-26-031-Drywall-Sanding-Adapters/dp/B00009OYGF/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1356567852&sr=8-13&keywords=dust+free+drywall+sander

Or something like it. The local farm store had something quite close in design and I had thought it might adapt to long board sanding for BUB. Seems like it's doable.

[atahoekid]

then tracked it in the house ... which was NOT appreciated by “she who must not be named” ... ...

My other half insisted that I do something about that same issue. I ended up having to wear a painters suit and a painters hood. Had to take them off in the garage before entering the house. Not fun during the hot summer days but I could see her point... Kept most of the foam dust out of the house but not all of it. I still find pink dust on stuff in my garage, probably will for a long time

[atahoekid]

how about this?

http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-26-031-Drywall-Sanding-Adapters/dp/B00009OYGF/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1356567852&sr=8-13&keywords=dust+free+drywall+sander

Or something like it. The local farm store had something quite close in design and I had thought it might adapt to long board sanding for BUB. Seems like it's doable.

Yup I think it would work fine. Hate drywall dust.... That's stuff is not only bothersome, it's nasty and irritating.

[Wobbly Wheels]

My only concern about that is how you would adapt it to a long board. I think you'd be hard pressed to get a flat surface nice and fair with a board that small, plus it would be exhausting because you're using one arm...then the other...then back again, rather than getting your upper body moving and just holding the board.

I wonder how well water would work ?
I've noticed that it's static that seems to really make it stick to everything. I wonder if you had a coarse board and a dribble of water washing over the surface while you sand ?
Maybe a pond, fountain, or fish tank pump ? I see those at Habitat pretty regularly.

[GPW]

Bonnie , Thanks !!! That looks just like what we had in mind ... and it’s Thrifty too ...
Water sanding might work, not tried that yet ... but you’d need waterproof sandpaper ...

[Wobbly Wheels]

I wasn't thinking of wet sanding in the traditional sense to get a finish, more like how you wet down the floor of a spray booth to keep the dust down before you shoot paint. It makes and dust too heavy to fly and kills the static that makes it stick to the surface you're painting.

[GPW]

You guys talking about sanding foam ???

[Wobbly Wheels]

I think that's where this train's going off the rails.
I'm talking specifically about keeping the foam 'snow' from sticking to everything. If you can make it heavier and get rid of the static that makes it stick, I think you've got it beat.
I think blowing it with a vac would make much more of a mess - like trying to blow off a cloud of drywall dust.

[loaderman]

The foam dust clings because of static electricity, could you use this to your advantage somehow?

[GPW]

When we were sanding the paddleboards (foam), "the girl" want to spray me down with anti static spray ... Had to pass on that .... Didn’t know which was worse , the spray or the dust ...

[eaglesdare]

doesn't this snow stick to plastic? maybe you could make a plastic garbage suit? all the snow could stick to it and then dispose of the suit. ok, ok, its my first cup of tea. but i am sure that thought is no worse then some other ones in this long thread.