Our Little Guide to … making a sturdy dust collector 

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Best. Background. Music. Ever!

When using a step down bit you can apply light presusure and get a clean cut. The old saying is " Let the tool do the work for you " once you get the intial pilot hole you basicly let it fall through the steps. A hole saw in reverse can also give you really clean cuts in really thin metals.

Its a long time since you posted this video, but thank you for doing so, I am definitely going to have a go at this!

Avoid any sharp bends in your vac hose or fittings, that cuts the air flow %50, I noted that your black hose had a 90 degree bend, try and avoid this and make bends as gradual as you can, your vac engine won’t work as hard and you’ll get heaps more suction.

Come for the ideas, stay for the music.... 🤣 What is with 5-gallon buckets in Europe? I summer in Greece and the only ones I can find are expensive as hell, and very very thin. Here in the US I am a house painter and I I have so many I literally throw them away, and all of them are sterdy enough to be able to stand on them without problem. But then again, almost no one uses metal buckets here, so... Good video, keep it up!

I'm just beginning the journey of building a real vacuum system for my shop, instead of the half azz, make do setup I have. (Several horizontal pipes have to come apart easily 'cause they fill up w/ dirt; the vac don't suck enough. It just sux. LOL) Anyway, I'm glad I saw your vid right outta the gate; didn't know dust collectors would collapse. Had a thought while watching... could a dead Shop Vac, minus the motor work as the collector instead of a 5 gal? The Shop Vac canister shouldn't collapse... Prob find a dead one free. Hmm... A tip on using step drills. Before you get to it's max diameter, turn the metal over to cut away the opposite side protrusion. I've also found most step drills aren't sharp enough, even right outta the box. They're easy to sharpen... hone the vertical V-cut. Don't sweat the gold coating, being sharp out weighs any loss of benefit if you hone away the titanium coating. I have an uncoated step drill I keep sharp & use it on mild steel as thick as 0.375".

You know how most house hold vacuums have a small relief slot couldn't you have put a vent in between your intake hose between the bucket

hmmm, guess they don't have hole saws either in the UK!!

It's not so much the orientation of the inlet pipe. If you were to add a Thien-type baffle under the inlet pipe, it will minimize the amount of dust that the outlet pipe sucks up. Like a barrier between the settled dust and the vacuum outlet. Just create a disc about the diameter of the barrel, cut away about 240 degrees from around the outside of the disc and support it with 3-4 threaded rods under the lid. Position the cut away so that it starts a few inches from the end of your inlet pipe and ends before it makes it way back around behind the inlet pipe. The cut away should be about 1" to 1-1/4" wide. If you search YT for "Thien baffle", you'll see what it should look like.

I know the feeling from the other end of the size spectrum. After spending weeks looking for proper parts for my Grizzly (G0944)... 6" fittings/elbows to make a dust separator, I gave up and just spent the money to buy a ready made unit from Oneida (Super Dust Deputy XL). $230 USD for a chunk of molded plastic. Ugh. I could not find 6" PVC parts for any reasonable price and the cost of a metal drum was crazy. I just mounted the Oneida to the top of a standard metal trash can... sorry, dust bin. Done. Works! :)

Hah! I did a similar thing with a similar bucket, it worked well, but my Vax was getting hot. So I replaced the filters. The bucket collapsed completely. 😬

Are you saying no Home Depot buckets in the UK? If not, I'd buy a pallet load of them ship them to you if you want to be a distributor for me. Good work there bud.

ever heard of hole saws

FYI Home Depot paint cans don’t work all that well either

Why aren't you using a cyclone on top of your bucket ? I made a dust separator/collector using a cyclone and a plastic food container bin (similar size to your steel drum) and it works very well when used with my DeWalt shop vac.

What size was piping. What to get and how many

good for a laugh

You should join a Mens Shed and use their tools!

Where did you get the bucket from please?

where did you buy thr drum please.

Your "dust collector" will lose start to lose efficiency as it starts to fill up. There's a reason why commercially made ones aren't just a bucket with holes. They're setup so that when sawdust enters the separator the Centripetal Force pushes heavier elements to the outer rim and eventually fall into the collector while lighter elements gets sucked into the wet/dry vac. For all that work, you should've just spent $40 on a Duststopper for much better results and save yourself time.

Auto paint shop suppliers sell empty steel paint 20 litre paint tin.

I’ve never seen such a convoluted method as this. You need to be in a care home.

I'm going to start saying RU-vid like this, and hopefully evolves into me saying stupid the way the UK does

why did he just use a hole saw or drill a 3/4" hole then use a electric nibbler both wood give you a finer hole or a jig saw with a steel blade you don't work harder but smarter.

идя великолепная.... на руки из жопы растут!

God I feel for you poor people in the UK who can't buy a 5 gallon bucket Jesus lol I grow cannabis for a living so there's like thousands of them everywhere