Wood Project Ideas

That Giant Sucking Crushing Sound Part II

Once my metal chip bin met with crushing failure, I immediately scrapped it and set about re-building the dust collection bin. I first looked into buying a metal 55 gallon drum, but found them to be prohibitively expensive. I then found a plastic 55 gallon drum that had seen better days and was suffering from a cracked edge. As the bin was plastic I was able to simply cut off the cracked top section with my jig saw. After the cut I was left with a workable +/- 48 gallon drum with a gaping hole at its top.

rough fitting the mounted top section.

In order to mount the Dust Deputy to the plastic drum I initially thought of making a round lid out of MDF that would rest on the top of the drum and be sealed with weather stripping. In order to do this, I began flattening the cut edge of the drum. I then flattened it some more, and some more after that. Then I ran out of patience. It dawned on me that if I made a new top for the drum out of sheet goods, I could permanently mount and seal that to the drum and then cut a removable top sized to perfectly fit the mounted one. In order to make the mounted and removable tops exactly the same size I screwed them together and then cut them to size on the table saw as a single piece. Being lazy, I made the top square, rather then cut of the corners to make it a space savings octagon. I attached a lip of 3/4" baltic birch plywood scraps around the edge of the removable top to better gasket them and chamfered the inside edge of the lip to make tops easier to set on one another.

I rubbed in and let the glue on the cleats on the mounted base dry before flipping the unit over and screwing into them.

In order to mount the mounted top I glued and screwed cleats to the top. I used a jig saw to cut the middle of the mounted to out and then screwed the plastic drum to the cleats. I sealed the screws and the drum to the mounted top with M-1, a fantastic sealant we use at work.

The mounted top, sealed to the plastic drum.

I was at this stage in the construction when I heard that MDF was porous and might not provide an air tight top. To combat this, I sealed the top surface of the mounted top and the bottom surface of the removable top with shellac. If this doesnt prove to be enough Ill glue an EPDM gasket to the mounted top.

The completed Dust Deputy setup.

With the top mounted and air sealed (hopefully) it was quick work to install the Dust Deputy and previously built elbow assembly. I connected the CT22 and turned the knob all the way to the rabbit. It sucked and sucked and didnt crush.

The wheels make it so much easier to move.

As a final convenience I mounted castors to the bottom and handles on the side of the plastic drum. This lets me easily move it around the shop and will hopefully let me easily empty it (though I fear its emptying frequency will be based more on weight than on capacity).

Now my shop sucks with the best of them. How does your shop suck?

That Giant Sucking (& Crushing) Sound - Part I