'Tip O'the Day' from the Village Idiot....A cheapskate's dust bucket

[Rick Potter]

I have an old Rockler open base router table, the one they made with the wooden legs. It has a PC 7518 and a Rockler lift, table and fence....the whole shebang.

It only has dust collection off the back of the fence, and usually does a decent job catching dust. Some goes down and out, but not that much.........that is until now. I recently got a nice 1/2" round over Freud Quad cutter bit, which I am using to do edges on a bunch of drawer faces. This bit works really nice, clean cutting and all, and it has a shear angle on the cutter.

Therein lies the problem. The shear angle on the cutter actually FORCES the debris down faster than the fence mounted hose can suck it up, and it blows chips out onto the floor.

When I was at Rockler the other day, I saw what they call their dust bucket, a sheet metal box that goes around the router with a DC fitting. I am sure it works well, but it was $80, and I am cheap. I decided to use a cardboard box and test the concept before spending the money, then decided to go ahead and make a plywood box, but the table has fold up extensions and they are in the way. A light dawned, and I decided to use a plastic bucket as a temporary box, but decided it was too hard to attach a DC fitting to it.

Then came the epiphany...I have a rectangular bucket that had Costco laundry soap in it. It is HD and reinforced, and I stuck it up to see if it would fit, and it is actually just a bit larger than my router plate. I cut out a rectangular hole on the backside with a jigsaw to fit a 4" DC fitting I had, used a 2" hole saw to cut two holes in the front side at the bottom, and two 1 3/4 holes a little higher up on the front. I figured this would give me intake air, along with some coming in the bit opening.

I pulled the cord through one of the holes, stuck a little hydraulic jack under it and jacked it up to hold it to the bottom of the table. 4" DC hose to the back fitting, 2 1/2 to the fence fitting, and then I ran a couple edges on a board to test it.

I would rather be lucky than good....it worked perfectly, no noticeable dust on my not so clean floor, and almost nothing in the bottom of the bucket.

Cost me nuthin'. Just an hour of my time.

I may do something fancier sometime, maybe not.


Rick

PS: Yes, I do have an enclosed router table, but it is set up for cope and stick right now, and I don't want to change it.

[Kurt Kintner]

Pretty good concept..... Think I'll try it in my closed table....

[Jim Andrew]

Thing I had the most trouble with was collecting dust from grooves on the router table. Sent a router base to Eurekazone, and they attached a plastic pipe where one of the handles went, and closed in the base with clear plastic. Have to take the base off the router to change bits, but it does a great job collecting the sawdust from grooves.

[Mike Kees]

Rick,I think that we need to change your name from "the village idiot" to something like "Rick the resourceful repurposer" . Well I thought it had a chance but apparently my spell checker does not like it! Seriously why would anyone want to pay 80 bucks for something you could make yourself,great idea. Mike.

[Pete Janke]

I used a plastic bin from Target. It is attached to the table on my G0691 with a hinge and foam strips. One side has a hole for air which allows me to reach in and change speeds on the Hitachi M12V2. The other side has a 4" blast gate attached by hose to my dust collector. I also have over the table dust collection through the fence. This low cost solution works well for me.
G0691 Router Table Fence.jpg Router TDC1.jpg G0691 Router Table Dust Coll.jpg