On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 04:17:36 -0500, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 08:17:57 GMT, Puckdropper
wrote:

knuttle wrote in
:

Any thing can be handled WITH THE PROPER SAFETY PRACTICES. It is when
you neglect those practices that accidents happen.

In the winter when doing a lot of work on my table saw, I turn off all
spark producing devices, as dust like volatile liquids can explode
with an ignition source and the right concentration. With saw dust
the chances of explosion are extremely low. But the chances of one
house blowing up from a gas leak are extremely low.

It's been a long time since I've seen the saw dust explosion thing... IIRC,
it takes a dust to air ratio so thick that you can't breath.

And it takes actual dust, not the chips produced by most cutting
tools.

But how many times have you seen instructions for dust collection
systems that stress the importance of grounding everything and having
drain wires through plastic portions? I guess they help because
they'll keep the dust (into the collector) to a mini um.

A really big sander might do it but I would be very surprised if
anything found outside of a large factory would.

It's all about concentration but your points are valid. The dust from
sanders may be too large, too. Fine sanding doesn't produce nearly as
much dust as a coarse grit and the dust from a coarse grit is large
and will fall out of the air anyway. The real problems are in places
like flour mills or corn processing.

Gas, on the other hand, is a really fine powder. ;-)