You may want to warm up the shop SLOWER next time, the cast iron is
heating up slower than the air and the temp difference is causign the
condensation.

As to why it is being seen the most on the jointer is a puzzle

John

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 03:39:30 GMT, "Mike in Mystic"
wrote:

Hi again,

Well, I just posted about my pleasant table saw tuning experience, so I have
to offset that with a bit of a frustration.

Before I tuned the saw, I cleaned the surface of some light rust. I live in
CT and this winter has been VERY cold. My shop is in a dedicated bay of a
two-car garage, but there's a stud wall separating the two bays (a door
gives access between them). The "shop" is about 6 feet wider and deeper
than a "typical" garage bay, which puts it at about 16'x24'. The walls are
all insulated, but there are two fairly large windows, two sky lights, and
the garage door isn't insulated.

I heat the shop with an 80,000 BTU propane heater, which generally does a
pretty good job. A few weeks ago when the outside temperature was about
35-40 deg. F, I was able to get the shop from about 40 degrees to about 75
degrees in maybe 20-30 minutes. Today, the shop was at a nice and cool 21.5
degrees F and it took a LOT longer (about 1.5 hours) to get to 70 degrees.

Now to the rust question, the light rust that I found on my table saw wasn't
too big a deal. I just sprayed the surface liberally with WD-40 and let it
sit for maybe 10 minutes, then used a green scotch brite pad and my ROS to
buff it off. Then I sprayed it with some Topcote and a good layer of paste
wax.

Last week I had to do the same thing to my jointer (the 6" Delta
professional). The only thing different was the amount and severity of the
rust. The jointer had some pretty thick rust and it was on just about every
cast iron surface on the tool. It took me a LOT of effort to remove it,
even though the table saw and jointer had sat idle about the same amount of
time.

Tonight, when I started to work on the tablesaw and as the garage/shop
heated up (using a 80,000 BTU propane heater), I noticed that the jointer
surfaces already had signs of light rust again (pretty faint, but still
there, and after only about a week since I cleaned it, and coated it with
Topcote (no wax on the jointer)). As the room became warmer, I saw SEVERE
condensation on the jointer. It was literally puddling up on the tables. I
was mystified. I checked the tablesaw surfaces - no condensation. I
checked the bandsaw table - nothing. I even looked at a few of my
handplanes, etc. and no sign of condensation - it was just happening on the
jointer.

Does this make any sense?? It sure explains why the jointer is suffering
the most from rust, but I don't really get why the jointer surfaces would be
so much colder than the rest of the tools, which is the only reason
condensation would preferentially occur there. Has anyone else experienced
this kind of thing?

I read the interesting review of rust removal and preventative agents in the
latest Wood magazine and I have some Boeshield on order. I hope it does the
trick, because I don't want to have to deal with this every week or two when
I need to use the jointer.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but hopefully someone has some insight into
this.

Mike