Bucket stuff?

T

Tin.Man

Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
876
So I use a home depot bucket with a little soap in it to attract g10 dust and metal dust under my grinder... What do you guys do when you change it out? I dont want to dump it down the sewer cant imagine g10 dust and steel muck is good. But no idea
 
You can just dump it in the garden. The G-10 dust probably repels slugs, snails, and voles. The iron is good for the grass and plants.
 
If it is legal to put G10 and steel and grinding belts in the landfill where you live it is probably legal to put dust composed of them in the landfill. Some municipalities require that you dry it out first. I dispose of tons of phenolic fines this way.

If you live in a place like California etc, all bets are off.
 
i swap out the bucket so i have one that only gets steel (i then tak it to my local trash man and put it in his steel screader pile ) i had 3 5 gal buckets 2 of balls of steel dust and one of used SS HT foil
as for the water i have stones around my shop and i put it there (water is not bad looking after it settles a day
 
I just dump the grindings out back in the bush behind the house, it oxidizes and breaks down returning to the ground where it once came from.
 
I strongly suggest that you dispose of all metal, phenolics, stabilized wood dust, etc in the landfill and do not dump it on your garden or anywhere around your house. It is true that iron in reasonable amounts will simply rust and that soil is made up of mostly iron and aluminum oxides, but chromium, vanadium, phenolics etc are TOXIC even in small amounts and make whatever soil you put them on toxic for decades or centuries to come. Do not ruin a piece of land for no reason and make it dangerous for you or the next people to live on your land. Industries have to legally manage their waste, we should do it too. I let the bucket dry down/fill up until there's not much liquid at all, bag it and put it in the landfill where it's sealed from groundwater and in a designated location. Even the woods we use in knifemaking that aren't stabilized are still typically quite toxic, don't mess around with this stuff and dispose of it properly.
 
BTW as an example, I have spoken with two "used to be full-time metalworkers" who had to quit due to acute toxicity, one of them a knifemaker, who have severe memory, immune, nerve, and joint problems due to exposure to metal dust from even low alloy steels like 5160. Wear a respirator, wash yourself off immediately after work (you absorb it through your skin too by the way), and operate in good air circulation. The problems were not so much the iron, but the nonferrous alloying elements. The knifemaker was selling all of his equipment and is extremely debilitated, with psychological problems from the poisoning to boot. It was his only livelihood and now he's paying more in medical bills than he probably ever made. Don't do this to someone's kids who might be gardening a plot on your land after you're gone and treat the waste we create as knifemakers with respect.
 
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