Small Paint Pail Thien

[Sawdust Steve]

I had a router with dust collector and only a 1.50" tube for the hose pickup.  Was doing a lot of MDF and the filter of shop vac clogged in 20 minutes of use or less.

So I went to the blue store and browsed for material.  (did i mention cheap)  They had some plastic paint pails that had ribs around the diameter and set into each other with a flange.  I bought two and cut the first one couple inches below the lower flange.  This choice was partly based on the forum discussion of larger cans buckling. 

Drilled hole in top pail with forstner bit and made oval with dremel.  Then used glue gun to attach sink drain plastic tube on both outside and inside of pail wall.  Made sure it was just past center.  I was impressed with the strength.  Actually after the first trials I went back and put silicone over the glue gun weld due to pin holes.

Made the baffles from MDF, used spacers from plastic tubing and normal flange head bolts.  I used the flange head bolts to reduce any air disruption.  Due to the light plastic of the pail lid, I used another circle of MDF on the top of the lid.  I snapped the lid on before making the MDF sandwich.

Got an electrical outlet plastic cover to screw in the center of MDF lid cover.  Reason for this was to have something to glue gun to the tube going through.

It worked well, but I needed to get an oring made at the local hardware store due to some leakage between the pails.  In the first couple hours the swirl was visible. 

After the oring I also used some small bungee cords from the three MDF sandwich bolts to the bottom of the lower pail for a suspenders kind of thing.

Been working since February like a champ.  I can see the separated material level and change it about one a week.  The shop vac filter still looks clean and nothing in the shop vac drum.

Thanks Phil, hope to get the contribution on its way when things straighten out for me a bit.

Total cost was under $25.  The biggest single item cost was the oring.

Steve.