On July 10, 2018 at 14:58, buzz said...
The circular oscillating blades do a good job in plaster too. A few years ago we used a circular saw to cut a channel in plaster. Even though we constructed a tent there was dust everywhere and we looked like snowmen afterward. A few weeks ago we cut a similar channel with the oscillating tool, higher end vacuum cleaner closely chasing the blade, and no tent. Dust was not a problem. It is a good idea to wear hearing protection.
By the way the oscillating tool and straight blades do a good job cutting round holes in a plaster on metal lath ceiling. We used the diamond grit blades to get through the plaster and tungsten blades to cut the lath. Here we did use a tent and vacuum cleaner. We had excellent control over dust. The holes were nearly perfect.
I never work with power tools without using my ear plugs- I carry them everywhere.
That metal screen lath is great. Really. I had to do the same and that stuff tore up the narrow steel blades, so I switched to using the corner of the carbide encrusted tweezers, er blade.
I have an old squirrel cage furnace blower that was at my parents' house after my dad passed and I put a motor on it- I'm going to make a spray booth/vapor removal system but it could be used just as easily for dust removal- get a piece of flexible duct, make a stand for it and run that outside, then have a wooden box with air filters for a furnace on each face, but make sure there's some kind of screen to prevent the filters blowing out, or under-pully the motor so the air volume isn't too high. Menard's sells a plastic sheet with threads in a diamond pattern, for strength- it would be fairly easy to make a wooden frame with that stretched across the wood, as an enclosed space for making a lot of dust.
I had to cut a new hole in the base molding of an older home last Summer and never thought of using a hole saw- just marked it for an Arlington LV-1 and made a nice clean opening. Then, the painter plugged it before he primed the trim. Yay.
