Awesome DC upgrade!

[John Miliunas]

Been doing a fair amount of re-sawing and/or resizing on the BS of late. It's a 14" Jet w/riser. It's been a long time since I gave up on the stock DC collector on it (what a joke!). I had been just kind of jerry-rigging my 4" hose above the OEM unit and pointing it toward the guides. Still, especially with heavier use, such as resewing, it was pretty much a lost cause. Even with my pretty powerful air cleaner running, I'd get a pretty even coat of fine dust all over the shop. In reading about it, I found that I'm not at all alone in this situation. Many folks have just chosen to live with it, not wanting to cut into their lower wheel cover. I wasn't too hot with that idea either, but finally gave in. Below are the results of what I came up with.

The 4" angled port came by way of the local Woodcraft. I covered the entire area with masking tape for clearer vision of my marks for the hole and to help prevent scratches from the sole of the jigsaw. I decided on the configuration of the port, drew my pencil line on the tape and got going on it. (Needless to say, I had the door removed while doing all this! Dha!) Anyhow, I drilled a couple holes and elongated them to fit my jigsaw blade in and went at it. Quite painless, actually. Once the chunk was removed, a rounded bastard file took care of sharp edges and general cleanup.

I planted the port on there, marked my holes for mounting it and center-punched them. Once the holes were drilled, I took some hot-melt glue and made two passes around the perimeter of the port, in order to help seal it, especially as the wheel door is not completely flat. Screwed the port on and re-attached it to the BS.

Results? In a word: Fantastic! The whole process took well under a half an hour and I could not hardly be happier! In the one pic, you may note some white material over where the "NOTICE" sticker is. That's actually part of a thin vinyl magnetic sheet, which I notched out to fit around the riser guard and fold over the door and rear cast iron piece. That was a source for a LOT of air loss and this takes care of it very effectively. One of the pictures posted shows the BS with some sawdust on it. This is pretty much the TOTAL of any "spillover" and I don't think that can be helped, as that's the sawdust being carried along by the piece. I had cut a few board-feet before taking the pic.

So, for any of you guys with the same problem, but leary to cut up your wheel cover, I'm here to say that if *I* can do it, then I believe 99.8% of you folks can, too! If you should decide to do so, drop us a line and let us know how it worked for you. :cool:

[Kevin Gerstenecker]

Looks good John. I agree that the stock dust collection on the Jet Model you have leaves a lot to be desired. That is one of the reasons I went with the Grizzly.........it has a 4" Dust Port on the rear of the machine, opposite the bottom wheel. It collects the dust just fine with my 3 hp collector. Great idea you had............there is nothing like good dust collection..........especially the fine stuff you were dealing with.........that's the stuff that will clog YOU up. Thanks for sharing the idea and pictures. :D

[Steve King]

John,
Nice job. I had the same problem with my Delta 14" BS. Delta offers a 5" dust collector port that fits under the table. I don't know if Jet offers one, but you could see if the Delta will fit. I think this will get the rest of that fine dust.
The link below shows how I corrected dust collection when resawing on my Delta.
Steve King

Band Saw Dust Collection. (http://sekingusa.home.comcast.net/bandsaw.htm)

[Scott Coffelt]

Looks great, I have found that once you get over the idea of modifying your machine and actually do it, in mast cases you are extremely happy witht he end results. I had to cut out my drum sander's 2 1/2 port and replace with a 4" port, once I finished it was no big deal.

Once idea you can look at for collecting the top dust is those blue adjustable hose (lock pipe I think is the name). Attach it to the top of the BS and adjust to fit the size of work your doing. It stays put where you place it. I keep looking at it for the dress press, I think the next WW show in KC I will buy the kit they sell. Everything else I try just doesn't see to meet my expectations.

[John Miliunas]

Looks great, I have found that once you get over the idea of modifying your machine and actually do it, in mast cases you are extremely happy witht he end results.
Once idea you can look at for collecting the top dust is those blue adjustable hose (lock pipe I think is the name).

Scott, agreed on the "mods"! I finally figured if it didn't work, I could just bite the big one and order a replacement wheel cover.

As for the "lock pipe" (I forget the name, too.), I have that rigged up on my drill press. Works pretty well, but don't make the same mistake I did and put on the orange "crevice too" type of attachment. It restricts the volume of air the DC is trying for and doesn't do a thing to enhance collection. I finally took mine off (I forget exactly why) and I immediately noticed a vast improvement. It's *staying off*! I'm not sure about using it for the BS. I think I have a enough DC control now that, what incidental sawdust there is, I'm not too worried about. I was mainly concerned about the stuff which was getting airborne and my new hookup appears to be handling the bulk of that. If I ever get a bigger DC/cyclone, I may add a similar mod that Steve King refers to. That looks like a "do-all" solution, but probably needs a fair amount of available air. :cool: