: Okay all you apartment and living room builders... How are you keeping all
: that dust under control? Sans orbital sander? Industrial Wet Vac? My
: apartment dining room is longing for boat construction, but not at the
: sacrifice of a dust bowl.

Building in an apartment is very doable, but some safety precautions should be taken. Advice on epoxy work should come before advice on dust: When time came to do the major epoxy work (wetting out and filling of the large cloth areas) I wore a respirator, did my work. opened the window, then arranged to be out of the apartment. Being water-heated, there is no air transfer from room-to-room or apartment-to-apartment, so I kept the bedroom door shut and the window cracked to make it my safe-haven. I would do the wet-out on a Friday night and retreat to my bedroom. Saturday AM I would apply a fill coat, then go for a drive or a hike or something for a few hours, come back, fill agian, and retreat to the bedroom. This worked out well.

I bought heavy-duty 4-mil or 6-mil drop cloths from Menard's for ~$6 each, 12' x 25'. I used this stuff for the floor, and went thru 4 of them during my Outer Island this winter/spring -- just to get the place good and clean once in a while I would replace it. It holds up well, and drops of epoxy peel right off when hard. I kept a pair of soccer-type sandals that were my 'workshop shoes' and didn't leave the plastic drop cloth so I wouldn't track shavings all over the rest of the apartment. I would have done the major fairing work (with fairing board and orbital sander) outside, but my apartment is on the second floor and I figured I couldn't lower the deck and hull out the balcony and not break them, so all that sanding was done inside. During this stage I duct-taped very lightweight (~.5 mil) drop cloths to the ceiling to confine the dust to an 18' x 12' area. I duct-taped it every 2 feet or so. Be careful when removing this stuff -- I pulled a 1"x5" chunk of paint out the ceiling because I pulled a bit too hard. That was the only damage I've done to the apartment. You'll have some duct-tape residue to get rid of, which comes off with bike degreasers, but don't use Goo Gone -- it takes off latex paint, too.

Kayak building is really fairly mess-free with the exception of the big sanding stages. After getting the kayak assmebled, I lowered it down outside and did the final fairing out there (today, actually.)

I have some utility shelving that's come in handy. It's the plastic kind that comes with shelves and a bunch of plastic tubes that stackes one on top of the other. You can have (1) 4-high shelf, (2) 2-high, (4) 1-high -- they make for nice places to keep tools organized and double in a jiffy as workbenches. They can be found at most home building stores such as Home Depot as well as department stores like Target.

As far as tools go, I have a cordless drill, a skil-saw (reciprocating saw), and a random orbital sander. And they only saw use during short stages of building. I cut all my strips with a razor-saw and a mini aluminum miter box I found at a hobby store. I did 45-degree scarfs as I assembled the strips, and this miter box worked great. I didn't pre-scarf my strips.

Hope this helps!

Dean