J. Phil Thien's Projects

Thanks for the tips!
Vac already has a good filter and I know it's working because I now have a jar of fine clay dust from being silly and vacuuming the dry lawn. :)  Going to gut another vac I have and made a little 'no real collection volume, just dust and while I'm at it make the whole thing quiet' style suction unit to go under the bucket out of ply.
I don't have a jointer, planer, or lathe.. But it seems perfect for the saw bench, jigsaw, drill and cleaning up afterwards!
My shop is more decked out for metalwork, plastic, aluminium/brass casting,  and lots of random projects I do(New workbench is made from compressed concrete sheet so it's not flammable. :) so this is ideal a miniature dust collection system for me.

I /am/ going to help another friend who is getting rather into wood build one of these, so a much larger one is now planed to your advice, will just have to find somthing larger than a shop vac that is still dirt cheap though for him.

(Pic is after sucking up about 1/3(A good 6liters+) of a barrel of dirt, dust, crushed leaves, stones, seeds and whatever rubbish was on the dried up dirt farm of a lawn.. After shaking out the filter, there was maybe half a cup(1 cup = 250ml) of fine dust..  I'm very impressed..)

Having wanted a simple cyclone lid for a while now to keep the filter in the vac clean(It also gets used in the house and there's grumbling about me filling it with sawdust and metal shavings), I've been after some clear photos of a lid to copy.. Stumbling on this site and immediately deciding that this was the design for me based on the clear, easy to understand photos, a quick trip to the hardware store for plumbing and an hours work and this was the result. There's a number of mistakes and I didn't cut some bits very accurately, however..
All plumbing is 45mm  sink PVC stuff, right now it's held together with screws until I get some more glue after finding the contaier was empty.
The barrel is 20liters. Clear site gauge is just a plastic lunch container with rivets and silicone.
The yellow barrel is the bottom of the vac, showing a complete lack of anything as the extractor has caught it all. :)
I'm completely amazed at how well this works, does anyone know of something this /can't/ handle? And thank you for the design! I've been sharing it around and two other friends are going to make one(much neater and larger though:)..