re: Dust collector question

I bought one of these years back, for fifty. I now have much better systems (3), but still think this was a huge jump from my vacuums, that were better at vacuuming floors and such than collection the dust and debris tossed by my planer and saws.

The first thing to do is, lose the bottom cloth bag and replace it with a clear plastic one. Many use clear lawn bags from a big box store.

I bought some of the foam used to seal under pickup campers and that makes a better seal for the upper and lower bags.

The upper bag of these are, commonly, referred to as dust pumps, because they let a lot of fine particles through. A new, finer micron bag is a good investment, even on a cheap collector.

On down the road, rather than sell this, and if you have the room, do what I did – dedicate this to the band saw, miter box or some other tool and let your new one be your go to collector for the real chip producers, like the lathe, jointer or planer.

One of the things you may find, like I did, is, knocking the dust loose from the inside of the bag drops it on the plate and the unit must be shaken to get it all down to the lower bag, or it goes right back to the inside of the filter (bag/cartridge).

As others say, don’t restrict the flow to less than four inches. However, I do with my four bag system, when I connect it to the router table. It has an upper and lower collector (down and side draft) that are standard shop vac size. Still, the massive air flow leaves less than a teaspoon of sawdust and chips from a project.

I use my collector to vacuum the floor. I’m so used a four inch pipe, using a small vac is frustrating, except for detail cleaning. Generally, there is little dust in my shop that a twice a year blow out wouldn’t cure. It’s SOOOO much nicer than the old days of using a broom and vacuum, or just dealing with a mess.