Serious Suck Broom

[Mike Holbrook]

I have a Festool C22 E which is still going strong but it is designed more to attach to Festool tools and suck up the saw dust before it gets air born. It has floor attachments but the small hose & slip on & off attachments just are not great for sucking up large quantities of plane & drawknife shavings. I have become interested in working green wood which makes much larger wood shavings and also results in much larger total amounts of shavings.

I have a 18 Gallon monster from Lowes that I am going to toss. It has served me for many years but the cheap construction & attachments have been trying my patients recently, pieces breaking and coming off right & left. I am looking for something with a larger bag that has good solid floor attachments. Most of the home oriented vacs have such small bags it would take several just to clean up the refuse from one day of working green wood. I imagine fellow posters have some of these same issues but for some reason I have not heard this topic come up, so what do you guys use?

[Mike Henderson]

I bought a Ridgid shop vac at HD and have been satisfied. If you look at them, the labels tell you how loud they are. Some are reasonably quiet.

For picking up green wood shavings I'd want something like a shop vac with a big hose.

Mike

[Mike Holbrook]

I will check out the Rigids Mike. The big one I got at Lowes has started falling apart. maybe HD sells a more solid unit. The plastic handle broke, the hose has started collapsing, twisting enough to stop sucking, attachments cracking....The wife bought a nice metal unit that hangs on the wall in the garage for the Minis. It has great suction but the bag is too small. So many of the slide on attachment systems seem to loosen and come apart when trying to clean an entire floor. With benches, work tables, cabinets, equipment on casters....to work around those tubes end up getting pulled on. The one I was using earlier was coming loose from both the machine and the attachments, grrr. when it wasn't coming apart the hose was twisting and shutting down the suction. It was sort of a loosing battle.

[Will Boulware]

Skip the suck and just buy a broom? I've got the big Ridgid shop vac from HD and while it will suck up a men's XL t shirt with no problem (no, seriously... it will), I'm betting the shape and quantity of drawknife shavings will give it fits. I've gotten to the point that I sweep handplane shavings if I'm traversing a board, as the pointy bits on those clog hoses really quickly. Smoothing plane shavings are no problem, though.

[Mike Holbrook]

I hear you Will. I do sweep first. The problem I have found is those crafty little shavings roll and hide in all sorts of places where I do not see them until they get sucked up. I usually sweep a few jobs up before I bother to get out the vac so the small to medium pieces tend to get spread around. My shop & wood storage spans parts of at least three rooms. I am thinking about constructing some sort of pit/bordered area to put the shaving horse in to try & keep those large shavings together.Plus there is other dog and human traffic in the rooms my shop is in. German Shepherd dog hair is a challenge too. I'm still wondering about something that made a peculiar sound going down the hose earlier. After I sweep I hate to stop the vac go get the broom & dust pan....

[Steve Peterson]

I use a Rockler Dust Right with a 4" hose. Mount centrally where it has access to the entire shop and it gives me 55 gallons of capacity in the barrel. When I am done, it only takes a footprint about 18" wide by 6" deep.

Steve

[Chet R Parks]

As Mike said, Ridgid is great, I have 2 of them also a Festool CT36. You might also want to check out Ridgid car detail kit (about $35 at HD IIRC) that kit will fit the Festool vacs without special adaptors and it has a 1.25 diameter, heavy duty, nice 9 foot long flexible hose for which you can get a lot of different 1.25 attachments, to replace that small hose on Festool. Ridgid 1.75 hose will also fit your Festool.
Chet

[Mike Henderson]

Just an added comment, I think it's Ridgid that has a latch on their hose so you can't pull it out of the main vacuum (unless you release the latch). I have hoses from several different manufacturers so I might be wrong about Ridgid.

Mike

[Mike Cherry]

Mike, you are correct. My Rigid has a latch to keep you from pulling the hose away from the base.

[Derek Cohen]

Coincidentally, I have just purchased a Festool CT26E (after a Fein died). A vacuum has three main uses in my shop. It needs to used with a (powered) router, which requires an automatic on-off power connection. The standard Festool 27mm hose is sufficient for the dust extraction. Secondly, it connects to a table saw blade guard. The Fein used a 36mm hose. I rarely use a ROS (I have a Festool, purchased about 20 years ago when it was still Festo), but the variable speed control is needed here. Again, the 27mm hose will suffice. However, when it comes to sweeping up handplane shavings, the hose needs to be larger than 27mm. The Fein's 36mm was OK, but a 50mm is better.

Now the problem is that I am wary of using non-static-free hoses on the Festool. The hose on the CT26E is static-free. I have never experienced static problems in my shop, but if you combine the Festool with a Dust Deputy, then there is the risk of static ..... so the many, many posts on the Internet are saying. Oneida actually brought out an updated DD, the Ultimate DD, to control for static and the Festool vacuums. So it seems like there is something to this. Any thoughts?

Regards from Perth

Derek