Dust Collection

[Sam Beishline]

Looking for recommendations on dust collection system for small garage woodshop. What are y’all using out there?

[Randy Roberts]

The Oneida series of cyclone collectors are pretty hard to beat.

The great thing about a garage shop is that you can just open the garage door and take the leaf blower to the shop.

[Jim McConkey]

Even just a shop vac is better than nothing. Blowing out the garage AFTER you have inhaled the dust is not the best method. If price is important, Oneida has some DIY options where you can just buy the Dust Deputy cyclone part and supply a 5 gal bucket to go with it. Very affordable.

[Eric Knapp]

I recently got a small Laguna dust collector.

https://www.woodcraft.com/products/lagu ... -collector

It works well and is easy to move around. It even has enough power to deal with my drum sander. The motor can be mounted up or down depending on how you want the hose oriented.

-Eric

[JC Whitney]

If you're local seasons/climate/neighbors allow, perhaps consider a dust collection system that exhausts outside instead of filtering. My hobby-shop setup has gates at each machine, passes through a trash-can separator, and then exhausts directly outside through a simple wall cap. Admittedly, it costs me a bit in extra heating during the cold months - but my usage is such that it doesn't add up to much. I initially had a setup with filters that returned the "filtered" air back into the room, but was never able to approach the air cleanliness this system achieves. Less backpressure from the lack of filters helped quite a bit in boosting the exhaust airflow at each machine - and no filters to maintain.

[Clay Schaeffer]

A friend of mine likes the small Harbor Freight dust collectors and puts them at the worst dust making machines:
https://www.harborfreight.com/13-gallon ... 31810.html
What he likes about them is they are relatively small and tuck out of the way near the machines and don't require a lot of "plumbing lines" all around the shop.
I have an old Bridgewood dust collector and a number of castaway vacuum cleaners and a large industrial fan located near a doorway, and also work alfresco when the weather is fair and fine.
A good dust mask is something most of us have become familiar with since the pandemic if not before and is worth using when making dust.

[Alan Carruth]

My Oneida machine works well for the sanding table and joiner, but falls down on the bandsaw. The dust from that is moving too fast, and the big collector is set up for high volume/low velocity. I get better results on the bandsaw with a shop vac. On that I like to use the small Dust Deputy cyclone. Mine is an early version, made of metal, and came with a ten gallon bucket. The small shop vac draws a good vacuum and gets high flow velocity, but it only golds about a gallon. The Dust Deputy doesn't seem to hurt the flow or velocity much, but I don't have to shut down nearly as often to empty it.

[Glenn Howland]

I have a micro-woodshop (11'x11') after vanquishing a bedroom in our apartment. I'm using shop vacs for collection, and a hot air furnace filter attached to a box fan for air circulation. The box fan seems surprisingly effective, at least by looking at the filter. The sop vacs are great, but they tend to clean up after the fact. So I started fooling with PVC plumbing fixtures. They can be persuaded to fit shop vac fittings by applying heat from a heat gun, and a little patience. The heavy plastic fixture ends will soften and stretch sufficiently to make a connection. Not pro grade, but way better than nothing. In these pics the sander ports connect with a 2" pipe that then connects with my [General Int'l] vacuum's 4" hose. Somewhat less expensive than buying dust fittings, but the real benefit for me is that, without a woodworker's store nearby, I can bop down to the local box store and pick up whatever I need.

[Matthew Lau]

Hey Randy,

Which Oneida collector do you recommend?
My friend is selling his delta drum sander.