Shop Vac for temporary Dust Collection....adapters?

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

Hiya Folks, I've just gotten the gar...er shop cleaned up and need to build a few things. I haven't gotten my cyclone dust collector built yet so in the meantime, I was planning to just use my 2 1/2" diameter hose from my shopvac to at least get the majority of the sawdust. I don't see any adapters that go from 2 1/2" to 4" (dust ports on my tools). Are they available and I've just not found them or is there another recommended way of doing this? This is a temporary situation so I don't want to get too fancy with the solution but thought there might be a simple adapter out there to use. I've checked CPVC, PVC, ABS, etc.. pipe and they don't really fit very well. Thanks for the inputs. Cheers, cc

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

Just as I hit send, I thought of Grizzly. Sure enough they have this:

think that'll work for me!

[Tim Taylor]

Woodcraft and Rockler have the adapters too.

>

[RonB]

I have been using my old Shop Vac to suck dust from some of my tools for a few years. Works great with my oscillating spindle sander and benchtop belt/disk sander. Not so well with the band saw but I think that is mostly the bandsaw's problem.

RonB

[J T]

Tue, Oct 31, 2006, 10:21am (EST-2) [e-mail] (James=A0"Cubby"=A0Culbertson) doth peer around and say: =A0 I don't see any adapters that go from 2 1/2" to 4" (dust ports on my tools)

Temporary? I've got one word for you. Duct tape.

JOAT If it can't kill you, it ain't a sport.

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

Temporary? I've got one word for you. Duct tape.

But that's two words... :)

[Ron]

I've been doing the same for about a year now, mostly for my Delta planer, with good results.

The biggest drawback of a shopvac (besides the noise) is that the filter can clog rather quickly, therefore, I'd recommend the following....

Get a dust 'separator' which goes on a 30 gallon metal garbage can with two

4" ports, such as this.. some 4" hose and a hose reducer (4" to 2-1/2) like this.. duct taped the reducer to one of the 4" ports on the dust separator and attach the shop-vacs hose to it.

Connect a 4" hose to the other port and attach it to the tool of your choice.

One Saturday recently, I decided to plane a lot of rough stock I had (ROak, WOak, Poplar and Cherry). I filled my 30 gallon twice that day but the shop vac was still basically empty. Some of the finer dust did make it too the filter, but, over 95% of the shavings stayed in the metal garbage can.

HTH,

Ron

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

Thanks Ron. I hadn't planned to get that "elaborate" but given "temporary" tends to be a while for me, this sure seems like a good way to go actually. I think I'll do it! Cheers, cc

[Ron]

One thing I forgot to mention was, when you do get a regular dust collector, as I hope to do soon as well, keep the dust separator and connect the 4" hose from the DC to the dust separator lid, after removing the 4 to 2-1/2" adapter.

This was you'd fill you DC bag(s) less often and then whit just the finer stuff.

Ron

[Chris Friesen]

This only works up to a certain point, then the dust collector just sucks the separator bin empty. Apparently this happens right around the point that you're flowing enough air to get the really dangerous dust.

Chris

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

I'll do that but don't think it'll work with my setup. I'm building an airfoil cyclone and I suspect it'll have enough suction that'll it'll pull everything out of the can, at least I hope so :). Time will tell though. Thanks again for the ideas. I had completely forgotten about the separator's etc... Cheers, cc

[Michael Faurot]

I'll second the bit about a *metal* garbage can. I made one of these 2nd stage collectors recently out of a plastic garbage can. I've never had a DC or a made one of these collectors before, so after I got everything together and connected I noticed the plastic garbage can would start to pucker after a little while. Opps. :) I was able to work around this a bit by cutting out a ring of plywood and sticking that inside the plastic can. Now, for the most part it doesn't pucker too much, but if I use it with my router table the lid[1] will colapse sometimes. Oh well, I'll just use it until it cracks and then I'll do it right with a metal can. :)

[1]: I didn't buy one of those pre-made "cyclone" lids, but used the lid that came with the plastic garbage can and stuck 4" dust ports on it.