Woodworking is probably one of the most enjoyable hobbies or pastimes. However, unless you use only hand tools, it is also one of the messiest. Power tools are notorious for creating large amounts of chips, shavings and dust. If your workshop is in the basement or the garage, then you already know how this material gets spread all through the rest of the house. Even it isn't spread, it still is not particularly healthy or safe to be working in a shop covered in dust and wood chips.

This article describes a simple, fairly inexpensive, yet effective way to collect a good deal of the dust that is generated in a home workshop. The main premise here is that you already have a shop vacuum, with a minimum airflow rating of 100cfm. Forget, for a moment, what horsepower rating your vacuum is. All that is important is how much air it will move. If you have a small shop vacuum with less that 100cfm, then this article is not for you.

You will not find any detailed calculations here about how to size your collection system or maximize its efficiency. What is presented is a description of my system, how I built it and how you can do the same, all for less than $150.00 and a few hours of your time.

Air flow through the vacuum needs to be as close to the optimum rating of the vacuum as possible. The Achilles heel of most vacuums is their filter; it simply is too small to work efficiently in a dust collection system. Fortunately, after-market replacement filters are available which greatly increase the filter area, improve air flow, and are easier to keep clean. In addition, these filters trap particles of dust as small as 0.3 microns and prevent them from getting blown out of the vacuum exhaust. The best one I have found is the CleanStream filter by Gore.

The second bane of shop vacuums is noise. These things fairly scream. Various ideas have been tried to make them quieter, including constructing elaborate mufflers. My solution is to enclose the vacuum in a cabinet under the workbench. Having it fully enclosed makes it much quieter. However, you must allow for the exhaust air to get out of the cabinet. The solution is to drill some holes in the bottom of the cabinet. With this arrangement, it is still noisy, but it is tolerable and is no louder than the other tools.

Planning your system is fairly straightforward. Since you are starting with a not-too-powerful vacuum, you should try to position it as close as possible to the main dust producing tools. This will normally be your table saw, router table and jointer and if you have one, your sanding centre. Please note, I did not include the planer in this list. The planer simply produces too much heavy material for this type of system to handle properly. You can try it, but don't say I didn't warn you! Similarly, I doubt this type of system would be very effective for lathe dust and chip collection. So, try to position the vacuum between the main dust producing tools, thereby minimizing the length of run to any one tool. That being said, as long as you keep the overall length of the system to less than 30 feet, you can put the vacuum almost anywhere that is convenient. Make a sketch of your shop and the location of your power tools. If, like me, you need to move machines around the shop because of space limitations, sketch in the most likely locations of the tools so you have a good idea where the various inlets need to go. Unless you like connecting and disconnecting hoses, plan for one connection for each machine. Once you have your sketch, you can estimate the amount of pipe and other fitting you need.

Piping for the system is fairly straightforward. My local lumber store carries 2" thin wall plastic tubing for built-in vacuum systems. This material generally costs about $0.60/foot and comes in convenient 10' lengths. They also carry all the necessary connectors, elbows, tees and other fittings that are required. For my shop, which measures 14' x 20', I ran piping around three of the four walls (see Figure 1 below). I put in a total of six inlets to service the table saw, bandsaw, jointer, router table, bench band saw / drill press and one for floor cleanup.

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The plastic pipe is connected to each machine with flexible tubing. There are a number of sources for this flex-pipe, but I found that Lee Valley had the best quality at the lowest price. An 80' hose with a swivel joint at one end costs $12.75. You need one per machine.

The piping is fastened to the shop wall about 4' off the floor. You can make it higher or lower that this, but I find this is a convenient height to reach the blast gates.

So, what are blast gates? Well, they are "valves" that you open when you are going to use a machine and close when you finish. They allow all the suction of the vacuum to be concentrated at the machine in use, greatly improving dust collection efficiency. You can buy blast gates in either plastic or metal, but, in the best Scottish tradition, I chose to make my own. Figure 2 shows details of how these were constructed from scrap material in the shop. The key to making them is to keep all the joints as airtight as possible. I used a hole saw to cut the opening for the pipe and hose. I cut the opening slightly undersize and then gradually enlarged the hole using a straight cutting router bit in the router table until the pipe and hose were a tight friction fit in the hole. To keep everything in place, I siliconed the pipe and hose to the blast gate. Be careful not to get the silicone on the gate itself...it needs to open and close freely. Once you have gathered all the bits and pieces you can begin putting it all together. I started at the vacuum end. With the vacuum mounted under the bench, I needed a way to connect to the plastic system piping. I did this by cutting a hole in the bench top the same size as the pipe and the vacuum hose. If the two are different diameters, which they likely are, fasten a second board on the underside of the bench and drill a hole in it equal to the diameter of the vacuum hose. The parts friction fit in their respective holes. Do not put any silicone on the vacuum hose; you want to be able to "unplug" it to take the vacuum out for cleaning and so you can use the vacuum to clean up the shop. While under the cabinet doing this hookup, install a duplex receptacle to provide power for the vacuum. As a convenience to me, I made this a switched receptacle. The switch is on the end of a long extension cord which normally hangs from a hook on the side of the table saw. The built-in switch on the vacuum stays turned on all the time. I take the receptacle switch with me to whichever machine I'm working on and turn the vacuum on and off as I use each machine. Alternatively, there are remote switches you can buy to do the same thing, but they're a bit pricey and, after all, we're trying to do this for as little as possible, right?

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Now it's just a matter of measuring the length of pipe needed to go to each inlet, fastening the pieces together and attaching them to the wall. I did not glue the pipes together, in case I ever had a clog and needed to take the pipes apart to get at it. I covered each joint with duct tape to improve the seal. By the way, in two years, I have never had a clogged pipe.

When the pipes are in place, glue the blast gates in place and attach the flex-pipe to the blast gates and to each machine. You may have to get some adapters to connect the hose to your machines. For example, the jointer has a large chute to discharge the chips. A square plastic flange with a 4" opening, and a 4" to 2" adapter, solved that hook up problem. I found that Busy Bee had the best selection of pieces and were almost always cheaper than other vendors.

So, now you have everything hooked up and you're ready to go, right? Not quite. To make the system as efficient as possible you need to do a few more things. For example, if you have a contractor's type saw, you already know that the whole back of the saw is open. You need to close this off. There are various ways to do this, but the one I like best is to build a box around the motor and fasten the box to the sides of the saw. Put a top on the box and this will serve as a longer out feed table. Use pegboard for the bottom of the box so air can get in and help keep the motor cool. There are lots of other holes in the saw as well. Between the top and side there are many openings; duct tape will take care of these. The front and sides of the saw have slots for the arbour tilt. You can cut pieces of hardboard to fit over these. Hold the hardboard in place with fridge magnets so you can take the covers off to tilt the arbour. You can get a plate to attach to the bottom of the saw cabinet with an adapter to connect to the flex hose. In my case, the saw is mounted on a home made cabinet. An opening in the cabinet top allows dust and debris to fall into a drawer below the saw. At the back of the drawer is the connection to the flex hose. The fine dust and small chips go out the hose. The cutoff chucks stay in the drawer which can be pulled out for emptying.

You should do a similar treatment to the jointer. Duct tape the openings where the base meets the cabinet. Also, duct tape any gaps in the dust chute inside the cabinet.

Most router tables have some form of dust collection built into the fence. Mine has that, and in addition, the lower part of the table is enclosed also. The dust collection hose attaches to the back of the table and sucks dust down through the insert hole and back through the fence. Routing is almost dust free.

There's not much you can do to improve the dust collection on the bandsaw. As for the sanding centre, the best I can say is most of the dust coming off the end of the belt goes in the hose.

With other tools, there are a variety of ways to catch the dust and chips which get produced. With a drill press or scroll saw, you can run a smaller flex-hose up to these machines. Duct tape makes a handy fastening system. Alternatively, you can make brackets and clamps to hold the hose where it will do the most good.

You will have noticed that what I have described is a "single stage" collection system. By that I mean that the material collected goes directly to the vacuum. A two-stage system incorporates a cyclone or other device between the machines and the vacuum, the purpose of which is to collect the large pieces before they reach the vacuum. The simplest of these is a special lid, with an inlet and outlet, that fits over a standard garbage can. The manufacturers claim these are very efficient. I've never tried one, primarily because I do not have the room. I think it reasonable to assume that on a larger, more powerful system, there is likely great benefit to a two-stage system, particularly one employing a cyclone. On a small system, I think the benefits are marginal. However, if you find that your system usage requires you to be constantly emptying the vacuum, then you certainly want to think about putting in one of these, or upgrading to a bigger, more powerful, system.

One thing I haven't talked about is grounding the system. Conventional wisdom seems to be that plastic pipe should be grounded to prevent static build up and possible dust explosions. Personally, I think the dangers are greatly exaggerated in the home-shop environment. However, if you feel more comfortable, install a copper ground wire inside the plastic pipe and connect it to a suitable ground.

One other aspect of dust control in the workshop is that of airborne dust which the dust collection system does not capture. For this you need an air filtration system. There are lots of different ones on the market, or you can make your own. I have a commercially made filter system, but, since I built the dust collection system, I rarely need to turn on the air filter unless I'm using the belt or random orbit sander or I'm cutting or routing a messy material like MDF.

System Cost: