# Shop Vac



## denisemichelen (Jan 3, 2010)

Can anyone recommend a good shop vac ?
The ones at Home Depot or Loew's are not powerful enough + the filters clog too quickly.


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## BrianS (Nov 7, 2004)

lam23m said:


> Can anyone recommend a good shop vac ?
> The ones at Home Depot or Loew's are not powerful enough + the filters clog too quickly.


I have a small shopvac brand vacuum and I thought as you, not powerful enough. Get rid of the plane paper filter that it comes with and replace it with a pleated paper filter... HUGE difference.


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## crquack (Oct 10, 2008)

Not powerful enough for what? I have an HD shop vac which sucks up tools if I do not pay attention. I have had it for 3 years and changed the filter once.


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## BigJimAK (Mar 13, 2009)

Denise,

I don't know which shopvac model you have, so I'll make some wide-ranging comments. I've got two Craftsman shop vacuums, one 12 gallon, one 16 gallon. One draws about 9 amps, the other 11. They have pretty good suction and hold quite a bit w/o plugging up. There are also HEPA (ultra-fine dust) filters for them. I have one and they work great. The vacuums have ~2-1/2" hoses and sell for $50 - $120. You can usually find them used on craigslist for about 25-40% of that price.

If the problem is that its filling up too fast (wood chips, etc.), you could get a cyclone pre-separator like this one. Oneida Air Systems - Dust Deputy

If the sky's the limit of price, Oneida makes a Dust Cobra, but it sells in the $700 - $1,000 range. It draws up to 260CFM (several times that of a mere *mortal* vac  and can draw up to 90" of vacuum (*lots*), but is priced out of the budget of most. It is available here Dust Cobra

When you choose a vac, consider that its only designed to really hold 1/3 to 1/2 of a tankfull between dumpings. That's why many go with the 12 - 16 gallon units. They're kinda bulky but hold a fair amount.


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## xplorx4 (Dec 1, 2008)

I have two HD shop vacs that I use for dust control at my TS, router and sander. As said byothers they work just fine, but in my application they get cleaned often. The plan is to extend my dist control lines to pick up the TS and router this month or next so in the mean while I started wrapping a lower half of an old "T" shirt around and tucked in at the top and bottom so the heavy crud gets cought there and the filter stays much cleaner and when I clean the shop vac mostly I just shake out the cloth outside.


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## okanagan (Dec 18, 2009)

The Thien Cyclone Separator Lid
w/ the Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle.

The Thien Cyclone Separator Lid w/ the Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle


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## denisemichelen (Jan 3, 2010)

Crquack, do they still make your model? I am rebuilding my workshop after a house fire, so I am open for suggestions in all areas. I am thinking about going with the shop vac from Rockler.


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## TwoSkies57 (Feb 23, 2009)

I read recently that they now have ceramic filters for some shopvacs, including craftsman. The claim is that the materials do not stick to the filter. I do believe that .5 micron was the numbre they used.... havn't had much time to look further into it..if it works,,,i'm liking it. 

anyone with any experience with these?


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## crquack (Oct 10, 2008)

> Crquack, do they still make your model?


A good question. FWIW it is Ridgid WD09450. Ask your local HD or do a search on their web site. NB I am in Canada and if you are in US the model may not be available there.


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## Gap_308 (May 2, 2009)

*try this*

I went thru filters fast at first the I found the Dust Deputy. My filter is almost 9 months old and still clean. no suction lose at all, but the DD bucket fills up fast. best $ 100 I spent.


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## jschaben (Jun 21, 2009)

You can go to the Shopvac website and get specs on their vacuums along with a "layman oriented" description of what the particular specs mean. I, for one, really appreciated that. 
I use a bag and pleated filter which seems to help but I do need to change bags more frequently than I would like. I have just ordered a seperator lid from Peachtree to top off a 5 gal bucket and see if that helps. I may end up with a dust deputy yet. The shopvac is 210 CFM and 60" vacuum which is nowhere near "recommended" but about all my budget, space and power will allow. I'm running table saw, bandsaw, router table and drill press + the hand held stuff which almost all have 1-1/4" collection ports so I jump the vac hose around to whatever I happen to be using. I haven't got the suction power to run a lot of ductwork. :blink:
Here's a pic of what I ordered, should be in late this week.


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## phone_63 (Dec 31, 2009)

Hi I just came from HD and bought the Rigid 14 gal provac Wd1450 which was on sale for $99.00 and I used a HF 20% off coupon and got for $79.20.:dance3:


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## Frank Lee (Nov 29, 2008)

okanagan said:


> The Thien Cyclone Separator Lid
> w/ the Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle.
> 
> The Thien Cyclone Separator Lid w/ the Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle


Very interesting ! ! ! I will try to follow as you proceed. I have the need of a better system. I have a Shop Vac with a paper / pleted filter at this time, It needes help. Thanks, Frank:yes2:


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## anotherBob (Oct 28, 2009)

Frank Lee said:


> Very interesting ! ! ! I will try to follow as you proceed. I have the need of a better system. I have a Shop Vac with a paper / pleted filter at this time, It needes help. Thanks, Frank:yes2:


Hi Frank, I didn't feel like making one as it cost less than $30 for one ready to use for WoodCraft:

Trash Can Cyclone Lid - Woodcraft.com

Since you have your location in your profile... here is a pedal-to-the-metal collector that looks like a fantastic price:

Powermatic Dust Collector

...that one would/should last ya for quite some time, and do a terrific job the whole while...


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## dawziecat (Dec 8, 2009)

I recently bought a Ridgid WD16650 from HD. It is a 16 gal, 13A machine and replaced a very old 12A Craftsman machine that became busticated.

I was routing away merrily just yesterday and noticed that there seemed more chips about than normal. The vac was STUFFED . . . absolutely chock-up-to-the-ears PACKED with chips and dust.  Amazing the vac worked as well as it did . . . until it just stopped picking up debris. So, I will have to check it more frequently in the future.

I would not want a smaller machine for shop use . . . bigger would be better but . . . for carrying out to use in the car . . . it is too big.

A guy needs more than one shop vac.


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## BigJimAK (Mar 13, 2009)

" A guy needs more than one shop vac. "

A little humor in my life: I've got a 12 gallon Craftsman I've had for a long time (still works well) but, when my (83yo) Father called me, told me he was cleaning his garage of things he didn't use any more and offered me his shop vac as a second, I was overjoyed. You see, my Dad had a small (~6gal) shop vac with a nice flexible hose about 1-1/2" in diameter and I figured it'd be a good one to set up with another HEPA filter and use it for ROS sanding. I told him I'd drop by after work.

Imagine my surprise when I got there to find his old vacuum had finally died and he'd replaced it with a 16gal Craftsman, even larger than my existing one.  

Well, he wanted it gone so I took it. Now I've got to find a nice flexible hose in a smaller diameter to hook to *one* of the vacs to use for ROS, since the barely flexible hose that comes with it would make the ROS very cumbersome to use. 

Can anyone recommend a good aftermarket sanding hose for connecting to portable power tools with limited suction requirements?


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## jschaben (Jun 21, 2009)

BigJimAK said:


> " A guy needs more than one shop vac. "
> 
> 
> Can anyone recommend a good aftermarket sanding hose for connecting to portable power tools with limited suction requirements?


Hi Jim - yep. In Home Depots submersible pump section they have a light duty hose in bags of 25ft, about 10 bucks down here. Some funky size like about 1-3/8 but 1-1/4 undersink PVC stuff slips right inside it. I have it hooked to all my handheld stuff plus the bandsaw. Only thing is, if you run more than about 4 ft of it, it will sing like a banshee. I think it is a combination of the material and shape of the corrugations sets up an oscillation you wouldn't believe. I only run about a foot of it and splice to a regular vac hose. I first got it I ran about 12 ft directly to the bandsaw, fired up the vac and got the bejesus scared out of me....:nhl_checking:

Oh yeah, I also saw some similar stuff at ACE hardware, called bilge discharge hose, or something like that. Problem there was they were getting about $4/ft.


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## DerekO (Jan 20, 2010)

The ones you make are different than the ones you buy. The placement of the output connection is different, plus there is a bottom baffle that helps keep the saw dust into the pre-separator. Not as much study has gone into it as for the cyclone Bill Pentz recommends, but the cost is also a lot, lot, lot less.

I just got done building the Thien lid and baffle. Works pretty good so far with my 2hp Harbor freight dust collector. Lots of others have built it for both 2" and 4" hose.

I emptied the collector bag into the bag under the table saw along with the shop vac I normally used to hook up to the router or general cleanup. The shop vac had been emptied not to long ago so it didn't have much in it. So I had about 1/4 or so of the table saw bag full.

I ran the dust collector with the thien separator and baffle on top of a garbage can. Ended up with a very tiny amount of dust that actually made it past the garbage can into the dust collector bag and I was doing huge amounts of saw dust at one time. I think if it had been only grabbing dust at the normal rate that I wouldn't have had as much make it past the garbage can.

I am planning on dumping out the dust collector bag and trying to pick up just that small amount and see how much ends up back into the bag instead of staying in the garbage can. Hopefully it will be less this time around.

Now all that is left is buying the good filter top from Wynn to replace the top 5 or 30 micron filter bag.

I might try the adaptation that only uses the baffle mounted into the ring of the actual dust collector and see how that works, but I really like the fact that heaver things fall out of the stream before they hit the impeller of the dust collector. A few times a screw or other metal was on the floor and got sucked up. Not a nice noise to hear hitting it since it is my brand new toy (actually got it because of my Wife's allergies and because of reading Bill Pentz's site and getting scared of the dust. Can't afford one of the Clear Vue cyclones without a lot of saving up so tried to make things better).

Next I plan to try and build a general ambient air filter blower. Put a fan in and some filters in an airtight box and leave it running to pick up the stuff in the air that is both just there all the time and the dust the collector doesn't get from the woodworking machines. Just need to figure out my plans and if I am buying a fan or just using a box fan or a window fan we already own.

The link to Thien's baffle also has a link to a forum about it and a lot of people have made it for many different size hoses or vacs or totally taken apart the original equipment and come up with some nice setups.


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