I’ve had a dust collector in my shop for a long time. It’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made. I could stand to have one with a little more suck, but this one gets most of the dust from the tools.
A couple of years ago I added a dust separator to the system and I’ll tell you what; that was the second best investment I have made in the shop. It separates out the large chips and shavings and is easier to empty than the dust collector. It’s great, especially when running the planer.
What I have not had was any sort of piping to the tools. I had a long hose attached to the dust collector that I moved from tool to tool as I used them.
This is a hassle, and caused me to not bother to move it occasionally when I was only making a single cut on the saw or the like. Which adds to the general dustiness of the shop.
Today this all changed.
Liz gave me some dust collection components for Christmas (romantic, right?) – a pair of Y pipes and three blast gates. She also gave me a gift card to Rockler. Today I went to Rockler and bought a few more parts and setup some dust collection for the three major tools that are clustered together.
Now I have piping and blast gates on the table saw, the router table (attached to the table saw) and the jointer. I still have to move the hose to the belt sander and the band saw, but at least I don’t have to crawl under the table saw to unhook it anymore!
Here are some pictures of the new piping. I made a couple of brackets to hang it off the out feed table for my saw.
Now I need to go make some dust!
