Popular Woodworking 2007-08 № 163, страница 34

A router with a dust-collection port will keep shop air much cleaner. And without all those chips time. A simple toggle switch opens one inlet flying around, it's a lot easier to see what you're doing. port at a time.

ers, routers and circular saws. They are probably not going to be enough for a table saw and other stationary machines that produce higher volumes of chips and dust. Some tools come with dust-collection adapters, making it easy to take advantage of a shop vacuum for dust collection. But this is not universally true and for some tools you may

have to fashion your own or look for alternate dust control options.

I discovered how effective a shop vacuum can be a couple years ago after I inadvertently stepped on the rigid dust filter that came with my random-orbit sander. I was too cheap to buy a new filter so I connected my vacuum to the sander. If the dust filter was moderately

effective, the vacuum was a revelation. It sucked up every speck of dust. Shop air stayed perfectly clean. And it takes a long time to fill up a shop vacuum bag with dust from a random-orbit sander.

The arrangement worked so well that I chucked the dust bag that never worked on my biscuit joiner and switched to the shop vacuum. It's somewhat awkward to be tethered to a vacuum, but the arrangement works beautifully from the standpoint of dust.

Good shop vacuums aren't cheap, but they are more efficient and quieter than bargain-basement machines. Look for one with a feature allowing you to plug the tool directly into the vacuum. The vacuum turns on automatically with the tool and shuts off a few seconds after you release the trigger on the tool. This feature is very useful when the vacuum will do double duty as dust collector as well as shop cleaner.

The other area of concern is the filter. It doesn't do any good to pay for a good-quality vacuum and allow it to spew dust back into the air because the filter's mesh size is too big to trap small particles. Filters can be made from either fabric or paper, or come as a

Dust collection can be designed right into jigs and fixtures. This router fence includes a tightly fitted dust-collection hood for efficient pickup.

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