Po man's dust collector

[Mike Mathieu]

Back in 1993,I was just starting out creating intarsia and I had just gotten an order from Leichtung Workshops for 440 of my intarsia project kits. I could no longer work out of my little 8×10 shed behind my house so I made the decision to rent a space to set up shop. I found a building for rent for $350.00 a month so I moved everything into it and set up my production line. I had a Delta 14” bandsaw,Delta 6” jointer and Delta 12”planer plus a couple of router tables and a few shop vacs. I took a leave of absence from my job as an electrician and went into full scale production of my Woodworking Plus Intarsia Project Kits. I soon found out that dust was a problem that I really had to take care of so I priced a couple of commercial dust collection units and realized that I couldn’t afford to buy what was needed plus the available power was not adequate to handle a large dust sucker anyways. The shop vacs were sufficient to handle the dust from the bandsaw and the routers but the planer and jointer just made too much dust and large chips for the vac to handle. I had been just letting the chips hit the floor and sweeping and bagging them up every couple of days.After doing this for a couple of weeks and with more orders coming in I knew that I would have to come up with a viable solution.What I really needed was something that could utilize the suction of the 6hp vac but would also bag up the larger chips produced from the planer for easy disposal. After doing a little dumpster diving for parts plus a good portion of yankee ingenuity I came up with my first prototype of the shop vac powered self-bagging chip collector . The barrel is made from a box of T+G hardwood flooring that was thrown in the dumpster.The hose is a piece of 3” used for blown -in insulation,also found in the dumpster.I did buy the fiber barrel and the sieve so the whole thing cost me about $15.00.
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop001.jpg

This next photo shows the top of the collector.
The sieve prevents large chips from entering the shop vac.
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop002.jpg

I made this adapter to connect the 3” hose to the planer
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop003.jpg

The fiber drum keeps the bag open in the collector
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop009.jpg

Chips bagged up
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop010.jpg

New bag in the collector—doesn’t get any easier than this.
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop011.jpg

This is a pic of the dust separator that I use for the bandsaw. I use filter bags in the shop vac but now only have to change the bags once for every 2 fill-ups of the separator.
http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww126/wdkits1/picturesofshop005.jpg

[Bob Slater]

That is one handsome dust barrel. DO you plan on upping the CFM with a bigger motor/impeller? I'd add an overhead filter for the fine dust too, as that is really the important issue.

[David Hostetler]

Interesting concept...

How do you keep the filter on the shop vac from plugging up?

[Mike Mathieu]

I use filter bags in the shop vacs which do a good job of catching the fine dust.I only have to change them about 3 or 4 times a year.