Remember that old riddle of the farmer that needs to paddle his bag of grain, chicken and fox across the river? No one ever questions why this farmer is raising foxes (you know, that classic staple of barnyard livestock?). Not to mention the fact that he's simultaneously raising a bunch of things that naturally want to eat each other. This is the farmer who invented "vertical segregation." One assumes his farm failed spectacularly, and that this is a cautionary tale as much as anything. But I digress. Here's a much more convoluted version of that riddle:



I really enjoy woodworking. I also really like my beard (it fools all you suckers into thinking I have something resembling a chin and jawline). I also enjoy not being broke. And finally, I enjoy being able to oxygenate all the tissues in my body so that I can do stuff and continue not dying. And thus, our predicament: you participate in woodworking, which creates microscopic airborne dust that over time causes permanent damage to your lung tissue. So you get a reasonably-priced respirator. And then you realize that your thick, lustrous curtain of masculinity is betraying you, breaking the seal on your respirator and allowing dust in around the sides. And your pink, dainty lungs can't grow a beard to hide their fragility, so something must be done. So you research full-face respirators, only to find that they're an order of magnitude pricier than your current respirator.



Luckily, my instinct to be a cheapskate is strong enough to warrant a half-assed attempt at creating my own safety equipment instead of shelling out the big bucks, so here's this instructable.



**Let it be known that I am in no way qualified to manufacture or give advice on safety equipment, and that even though I feel like what follows is a workable solution, this instructable is just as likely to be submitted as future evidence to deny my family a life insurance payout when they find me stuffed full of inhaled sawdust, a "taxidermidaddy," if you will. So don't go out and use this method on my advice. In fact, you should probably forget you ever saw this. Close this browser window and hunt down a box set of The Wire and watch it instead. Seriously, why haven't you watched that yet? It's incredible! What was I talking about? Oh yeah, disclaimer, disclaimer, blah blah.**