HI...I had a small fire in my dust collection system and am hoping for help in diagnosing what might have happened so that I don't mess up again.
Here's what I know (not sure which facts are relevant):
I was trying to make the oval holes on the stretchers of a "Ron Paulk" workbench. I had a very difficult time cutting those ovals evenly. I cut the circles out first with a router, then I used the router and a straight edge to cut the horizontal straight parts. The join between the straight cuts and the circles left some "bumps" and frankly, I struggled with the straight edge and my "straight edges" are sometimes wiggly. So we have some "bumps" instead of a nice line.
I put an old, Ryobi brand 1/4" roundover bit (with bearing) in my Bosch 1617 router and figured that the roundover would "improve" the appearance of the non-straight lines. I have a dust collection device on my router base and have the hose on it with my DustRight from Rockler) I am not sure what happened, but the router bit got briefly "stuck" in two "grooves" (bumps?) and it looked black in the recesses. I started smelling the burn and figured that these two black areas were rather black. I've burned the wood before with a router and it's never been that big of a deal. I move on.
Maybe 5 mins later I'm thinking "Boy, the smell is still strong for two black areas."...but I still keep working. I stopped to clean up more dust that was on the floor instead of the dust collector. Sometimes, my dust collector doesn't work well, and when that happens I unplug the fitting from the "pipeline" and it gets some air and starts sucking better afterwards.
I open up and find a pile of burning sawdust in the fitting! Of course, I panic, turn off the dust collector, remind myself that this is small and grab my glove and put it out. I then wet the embers to be sure.
Things were going fine until I started rounding over. I had tried a pattern bit to try to reference off of some straighter areas (the cut isn't even and the top half was "ok" but when I plunged further, bad things happened). The pattern bit seemed to give off a few sparks. Timing wise though, if that had caused the problem, I would have expected to smell it much earlier (there had been at least 1-2 hrs between the pattern bit sparks and the smell...I had to take several breaks, it's 95degrees in my garage).
Note that I did check the "trash can" to see if there was a fire in the dust area, which there isn't and I checked the Dust Right bag and there wasn't any fire. It seemed to only be in the dust collection fitting.
Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Meanwhile...I'm getting a new bit. Every time I use those Ryobi bits, I either get breakage or some other calamity.[attachimg=1]
Here's what I know (not sure which facts are relevant):
I was trying to make the oval holes on the stretchers of a "Ron Paulk" workbench. I had a very difficult time cutting those ovals evenly. I cut the circles out first with a router, then I used the router and a straight edge to cut the horizontal straight parts. The join between the straight cuts and the circles left some "bumps" and frankly, I struggled with the straight edge and my "straight edges" are sometimes wiggly. So we have some "bumps" instead of a nice line.
I put an old, Ryobi brand 1/4" roundover bit (with bearing) in my Bosch 1617 router and figured that the roundover would "improve" the appearance of the non-straight lines. I have a dust collection device on my router base and have the hose on it with my DustRight from Rockler) I am not sure what happened, but the router bit got briefly "stuck" in two "grooves" (bumps?) and it looked black in the recesses. I started smelling the burn and figured that these two black areas were rather black. I've burned the wood before with a router and it's never been that big of a deal. I move on.
Maybe 5 mins later I'm thinking "Boy, the smell is still strong for two black areas."...but I still keep working. I stopped to clean up more dust that was on the floor instead of the dust collector. Sometimes, my dust collector doesn't work well, and when that happens I unplug the fitting from the "pipeline" and it gets some air and starts sucking better afterwards.
I open up and find a pile of burning sawdust in the fitting! Of course, I panic, turn off the dust collector, remind myself that this is small and grab my glove and put it out. I then wet the embers to be sure.
Things were going fine until I started rounding over. I had tried a pattern bit to try to reference off of some straighter areas (the cut isn't even and the top half was "ok" but when I plunged further, bad things happened). The pattern bit seemed to give off a few sparks. Timing wise though, if that had caused the problem, I would have expected to smell it much earlier (there had been at least 1-2 hrs between the pattern bit sparks and the smell...I had to take several breaks, it's 95degrees in my garage).
Note that I did check the "trash can" to see if there was a fire in the dust area, which there isn't and I checked the Dust Right bag and there wasn't any fire. It seemed to only be in the dust collection fitting.
Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Meanwhile...I'm getting a new bit. Every time I use those Ryobi bits, I either get breakage or some other calamity.[attachimg=1]
