Reducing residual smell of burnt wood

[me2xv]

I purchased my Glowforge about a month ago and things are going well designing / printing things, but I noticed a residual smell of burnt wood throughout the upstairs of my house. Does anyone have any tips to reduce or eliminate the smell?

Thank you.

[Jules]

Get rid of the masking as soon as you can. That residue smell lingers on it for a long time. (You can weed it off and put it into a ziploc bag to reduce it right away.)

[dwardio]

There are many approaches to this, and most of the involve containment (@Jules’ tip about masking is spot on) or ventilating your workspace. After struggling with this for a year, I went for the nuclear option.

Re-vamped venting setup

For over a year, Trogdor and then Arges were ventilated with the tried-and-true dryer hose out the window method. My workshop is in the basement, so the only way to vent outside was out through a window well… [IMG_1363] For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t 100% satisfied with this setup. Do you know how hard it is to make an egress window air-tight?:tired_face: Over the past few months, I decided that exhausting out and up past our roofline was the way to go. Not only would it keep the exhaus…

The more reasonable approach is to add a booster fan to your exhaust run and continue to ventilate after the GF is finished.

Best of luck!

[jamesdhatch]

Also, check to see where your venting air goes. Mine exits the house in the basement to the outside. But it’s under the first floor bathroom so if the bathroom window is open the exhaust floats up and comes into the house.

[timjedwards]

Lean in… Get some forest-scented oil and pretend you’re camping! Or be boring and isolate your discarded masking.

[shop]

you can also run an air purifier in the room during and for a bit after your cut.

i got this one on sale and it seems to do the job of cleaning up stray odors that don’t get vented in my room.

Amazon.com: Holmes Small Room 3-Speed HEPA Air Purifier with Quiet Operation,...

[rbtdanforth]

@timjedwards

Get some forest-scented oil and pretend you’re camping!

I like that idea!
Fabreeze also works. When I bought a house a few years back the previous folk had dogs and even though cleaned and repainted; one could barely breathe for the smell. I hit everywhere with Fabreeze once and never smelled the dogs again. I did not expect such a total result.

Forest scented candles could work, or I got one of these

[geek2nurse]

The smell of burnt wood is forever associated, in my mind, with visiting my paternal grandparents’ home in Texas, since it was heated by their fireplace and everything in it was permeated with the smell of woodsmoke. @timjedwards was just a baby when their house burned down (nope, not because of the fireplace!) so he more likely remembers the smell of campfires in the woods out on their place in later years, but either way, I’ve always found it to be a happy smell.

[caribis2]

So get yourself a Cajun Grill (mine is older and is painted steel); learn to cook over split wood; hot smoke a half-rack of baby backs and have a rogue wind blow all the smoke through an open window. You soooo won’t notice the glowforge, just the smoke from the seasoned oak. Also, your clothes and hair will smell of smoke a lot so again, you’ll never notice the glowforge.

[rbtdanforth]

@caribis2

over split wood;

And If you live or are visiting Miami make it a point to gather some Trema it is not well known but the flavor it imparts to what you are cooking is amazing.