Shop Vacuum Dust Collection

Just had to share my recent shop vacuum dust collection that I built for the woodshop. It was so simple and so cheap and I am completely amazed with how well it is working out for me.

I started with a 55 gallon drum that we already had around intending to use it for rain water collection.

This barrel comes with a screw on ring and a top piece that I was easily able to drill a couple holes in for the plumbing parts.

Here is a view of the bottom of the lid.

As you can tell there isn’t much needed in plumbing parts. You can get everything you need at the local hardware store. I did purchase the dust collection hose from Amazon.

The vacuum attaches to the shorter pipe and the dust collection hose attaches to the longer pipe, depositing the sawdust and shavings below the suction. I have both pipes angled outwards toward the wall of the barrel in an attempt to create a swirling action.

At this time I am just using my shop vacuum attachments to clean up. I didn’t want to spend a lot in attachments until I knew it would work. Now that I know it does work, and very well, I will invest in the attachments that will fit this hose and make it even easier to use. I don’t know if maybe the shape of the barrel is adding to the efficiency of this little experiment. I can say that this simple setup is doing an excellent job collecting planer shavings and picking up dust from the saws and sanders in my little shop. I have collected maybe a quart of dust in the actual vacuum bag since I started using this. The down side is that you have to upend the barrel to empty the dust and shavings, but I can live with that for now. A regular shop dust collection system was not comfortably in my budget.

I hope this encourages someone else to try something like this. I received inspiration from several others on Pinterest before I ran with my idea.

Good luck and feel free to share what you come up with. I would love to see your ideas.