Radial Arm Saw Dust Control

[Aaron Berk]

Well I finally moved into the 21st century and added an AC unit to my shop. So now I no longer work with the garage door and back door open. I used to have these 2 doors open and 2 squirrel cage fans creating a serious cross breeze. This previous set up allowed me to be pretty slack in the DC department. Anything my PM1900 didn't get would be blown out the garage door. I took full advantage of this and had my 14" DeWalt model GA positioned right beside the door and skipped hooking it up to the DC.

So now with the shop at a nice and cool 78 degrees (insert stealth gloat ) I decided to relocate the RAS to make it "closed door" friendly. I pirated some technology from lumberjocks and built this little dust chute seen in the pictures. Once I get a bit more free time I'll slice through it with a dado blade to hopefully make it a little better. As it is right now I am tremendously impressed with it's ability to catch the dust. I still keep the shop vac connected to the blade guard and don't plan on removing that until the future when I go cyclone and 6" drops with 8" main.

Also I saw on here where a guy did a RAS DC chute that was under the sawblade kerf and he had excellent results. I'm seriously considering adding that to the package if/when I make another table. Another thing of interest might be to add a downdraft feature along the blade kerf in the table.

But I'm happy today, here is what it amounts to....

[Bruce Wrenn]

One thing I have found to be helpful is to pick up the dust from the bottom of the collection box.

[Aaron Berk]

Yes I thought about that, and somewhere on line I saw a setup that included a downdraft sanding table to the left of the saw. The sanding table used the same DC drop as the saw and it all was collected from underneath. I would like to have a sanding station to the left of my RAS one day.

If you notice in my pics, I'm using a 10' pc of 4" flex, the worst possible hose for this application. All things in my shop get done 2-4 times before being set in stone. It has to do with time/budget/priorities blah blah blah. LOL

[Ben Hatcher]

Aaron, I presume you're referring to my under the table collection post. I'm glad to see someone else benefit from it.

I used to have a "gulp style" collector and noticed that the dust would essentially follow the kerf all the way back then be deflected up at the end of the kerf. I think that anything you do to create a channel and enclose the end of that channel will provide exceptional results. Initially, I considered cutting wide, deep kerfs at 90, +/-45, and maybe a few others, putting some double stick tape on the uncut surfaces, laminating the top with hardboard, and capping the end, like you have done. I think that will work as well or almost as well as my set up. In the end, I decided that I would rather have a cross cut saw dialed in at 90 than have miter capabilities.

[Aaron Berk]

I've had the chance to clock some hrs with the new DC set up. Anything under a 10" crosscut gets 99% collected. After that it gets worse the further out you go.

Currently I was cutting a bunch of 22" panels to length and realized I might need to do some improvements sooner than I thought. I use my RAS regularly and can't have it dusting up my shop now that I work with the doors closed.

Man I just love this saw....
16 22" wide panels batch cut in groups of 4 (try that on a sliding CMS )

[Don Dorn]

It's a great idea but unfortunately don't think it would work in my shop as the dust collector really can't be moved from where it is - which is next to the air conditioner. Since I'm primarily a hand tool woodworker, I don't use it much, but when power planing, I need to shut the air off so it doesn't take in the amount of dust emitted from the bag on the collector. As to the RAS, I guess I'm old school and sweep it up.

However, based on your findings of 99% efficiency under a foot, I may have to re-think things. Thanks for posting.