Schultz
Gold Member
I'm one of those weekend or more like after the kids go to bed type wood workers.
It all started one day when my neighbor cut down several 4-5' oak trees. I talked him into giving them to me a couple logs and I had them sawed into lumber. So, I had this big pile of lumber in the barn, then I got the bright idea of making solid replacement passage doors for all the rooms in my house. From the day, I saw the downed trees it ballooned into creating a whole wood working shop. It's been 5 years in the making but now I'm finally finishing the doors I set out to make. Planning boards, routering them creates a lot of saw dust. While routering the raised panels I ran out of patients constantly unclogging the small shop vac. I then decided to make a dust collector.
Anyway several years ago I collected a scraped out air handler fan from work. This one happened to have the paddle wheel type fan. I put a new motor on it, instead of a 1750rpm, I used a 3600rpm. Now it really moves the air. I connected 3" schedule 20 PVC pipe to it and connected it to my table saw, planer, jointer, and router with blast gates at each. The pipe, flexible pipe, and fittings cost about $50-60, the blast gates were $25. I didn't want the expense and maintenance of filter bags so I run it into a homemade cyclone collector outside the barn. This cyclone collector blows the dust into an open trashcan. This collector can be made completely from scrap. I used a 50 gal plastic resin barrel. You can get these free from any company that molds plastic, they throw them out all the time. Attached are some pics of the cyclone part. It all works great, and I whish I had made this one of the earliest additions to my shop. Now the shop is practically dust free and it only cost about $80.
The part that mates to the blower, blows the dust in on a tangent to the barrel, this gets the dust spiraling. The heavy dust then falls to the bottom and out the hole. There is also another hole out the top. The top lid also has a 8" hole and blows fairly clean air but it does contain some fine dust. At first I was skeptical if this would work since the bottom isn't cone shaped, but I thought try it, see and then modify as needed. It worked pretty good. I am going to add a 6" length of 8" stove pipe to the bottom so it pilots into the trash can better and deposits all the saw dust/shavings into the can.
It all started one day when my neighbor cut down several 4-5' oak trees. I talked him into giving them to me a couple logs and I had them sawed into lumber. So, I had this big pile of lumber in the barn, then I got the bright idea of making solid replacement passage doors for all the rooms in my house. From the day, I saw the downed trees it ballooned into creating a whole wood working shop. It's been 5 years in the making but now I'm finally finishing the doors I set out to make. Planning boards, routering them creates a lot of saw dust. While routering the raised panels I ran out of patients constantly unclogging the small shop vac. I then decided to make a dust collector.
Anyway several years ago I collected a scraped out air handler fan from work. This one happened to have the paddle wheel type fan. I put a new motor on it, instead of a 1750rpm, I used a 3600rpm. Now it really moves the air. I connected 3" schedule 20 PVC pipe to it and connected it to my table saw, planer, jointer, and router with blast gates at each. The pipe, flexible pipe, and fittings cost about $50-60, the blast gates were $25. I didn't want the expense and maintenance of filter bags so I run it into a homemade cyclone collector outside the barn. This cyclone collector blows the dust into an open trashcan. This collector can be made completely from scrap. I used a 50 gal plastic resin barrel. You can get these free from any company that molds plastic, they throw them out all the time. Attached are some pics of the cyclone part. It all works great, and I whish I had made this one of the earliest additions to my shop. Now the shop is practically dust free and it only cost about $80.
The part that mates to the blower, blows the dust in on a tangent to the barrel, this gets the dust spiraling. The heavy dust then falls to the bottom and out the hole. There is also another hole out the top. The top lid also has a 8" hole and blows fairly clean air but it does contain some fine dust. At first I was skeptical if this would work since the bottom isn't cone shaped, but I thought try it, see and then modify as needed. It worked pretty good. I am going to add a 6" length of 8" stove pipe to the bottom so it pilots into the trash can better and deposits all the saw dust/shavings into the can.
