Since the table saw and jointer rarely get moved, it made sense to do something a little more permanent for them for dust collection. I decided it was best to add a second dust collector to my shop. After doing a bit of research, and some craigslist searching in vain, I decided to give the large Harbor Freight dust collector a try. While the quality for most of their power tools are questionable at best, the dust collector seems to be one of their gems, and it is very affordable. Plus, everything it will connect to is no more than 10′ away from the machine, which means minimal ducting, resulting in less loss of CFMs. For now my goal is getting the jointer and table saw hooked up.
I then went to the local woodcraft and bought the DC accessories I needed. I bought a tray for the table saw, a new hook up for the jointer, 2 friction fit blast gates, a Y fitting, a flexible hose, and hose clamps.
After getting the DC assembled and in its home right next to the table saw, I started working on modifying the table saw. As my table saw is an old contractor style table saw, it had an open bottom. The try itself was smaller than the opening so I had to close in the opening a bit. I grabbed some scrap wood and made some support cleats that screwed into the bottom of the saw. The tray was then able to sit on these cleats. I secured the tray to the struts with a few screws. Next came the blast gate. The idea of the friction fit was so it was easy to remove when I needed to move something around. The problem was it was too easy to remove and I later found that the force of the DC would often pull them off. So I put the blast gate on as tight as it would go, then drove a couple screws into it to hold it in place. I elected to keep the back open on the table saw
Next came setting up the jointer. Being a new jointer (less than a year old at the time) it came with a standard 4″ connector for DC. The friction fit blast gate didn’t fit it, so I bought a new connector and modified it to fit my jointer. I attached its blast gate in a similar to the table saw.
The next and final post will discuss running the hose, testing the new setup, and what I plan for future enhancements to my dust collection setup.