One of the more exciting additions to my shop in the past couple years has been a vacuum pump. Purchased primarily for use on the lathe I have long wanted to explore alternative uses.
With inspiration from a recent wood magazine I elected to try a desk with a bent laminated top veneered in walnut burl (featured in previous post).
The stumbling block was the price of entry for vacuum bags. Not to be held back and relying on belief in lean thinking it occured to me that a vacuum bag is no more than a large, thick plastic bag. Thinking of possible sources of plastic I quickly landed on shower curtains. I elected to go with the more expensive heavy duty found at any local home supply store.
Laying out the two curtains on top of each other I applied a single bead of vinyl adhesive along the bottom edge clamping the sandwich between 2 by 4’s. After curing overnight I did the same on one side and then the other. After all adhesive was cured I trimed the opening to eliminate the curtain hanger eylets.
The opening is sealed by simply rolling the edges neatly then clamping between 2×4’s. Below you can see a $50 vacuum bag successfully compressing a panel at 20 bars.
