A wet-dry vacuum or shop vac is one of the best tools for keeping a shop clean however, depending on how much of a mess it’s responsible for cleaning up, it can be become a chore in and of itself to then keep the vac clean! By adding what’s known as a cyclone separator into the mix, we can reduce the number of times we have to empty and clean the vacuum and instead, we can empty something like a 5-ghallon bucket more regularly — a much easier task. Anyone who has bought and tried a cyclone separator has almost certainly experienced two feelings:

1. The joy of seeing nearly all the wood shavings and crap being diverted into the bucket (meaning the vac stays clean) and,

2. Knocking the damn bucket over (and then having the vac undo all your separation work by sucking up all the contents of the bucket)

In addition to reducing the footprint of these two somewhat bulky things, this is what leads us down the road of building a cart to house all of this!

• Starting Point

• Step 1 - Rebuilding the cart

• Step 2 - Boom arm

• Milestone

At my last shop, after trying out my first cyclone and being overjoyed at the thought of not really having to empty the vac again… and then knocking over the damn bucket, I said set out to make my first cart. At the time, my dust collection was based around:

• Ridgid WD1680 wet-dry vac: this was a high-performance vac (2½ hose, 153CFM and a somewhat questionable ‘6.5HP [peak]’ rating). I installed both a filter bag and the HEPA filter

• Oneida Dust Deputy Deluxe separator: this cyclone handled the magic of keeping “99%” of the chips and crud from reaching the vac

At one point, I even went so far as to add a second separator in series (using a large garbage can) to reduce the frequency of emptying the 5-gallon bucket. For my purposes, I didn’t see enough of a suction performance drop but, it was yet another thing to trip on so it didn’t last long.

This cart worked reasonably well for me until I moved to this shop where I cannibalized the separator for a different project. I then partially disassembled the cart and I thought I would just use the vac as-is, without separation since I had dedicated dust collection for other tools and ‘how much could there be’?

I lasted a few days before I caved and bought a cheapo cyclone separator (of questionable effectiveness) and about 20 minutes before I knocked over the bucket before I rebuilt the cart.

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One of the things that bothered me about the previous cart was just how damn tall it was and how much of that was just wasted space (after all, I wasn’t really ‘using’ the container portion of the vac). As effective as the Dust Deputy design was, it was visually very tall. When I got the new separator, I opted for a much lower-profile design.

One new problem that I didn’t foresee was that the lid did not provide a very snug fit. With the weight and tension of the hose, it was possible to pop the lid right off the bucket! The organic/curvy design of the lid didn’t offer much in the way of allowing me to secure it down. To fix this (but still allow me to remove the lid for emptying) I just created a scrap wood hold-down.

Getting to this stage was pretty quick and I was happy to have my cart back but there were a few things that have been bugging me for a few years now that I wanted to sort out:

1. When hooked up to my sander or track saw, the weight of the hose would constantly pull on the tool which was a heck of an annoyance

2. The vac and the separator were only a few feet from each other, but yet there’s a 7-ft hose spiraling around to connect them

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When using the track saw or sanding, I’m mostly working at workbench height and it was the weight of the hose that would keep dragging it down onto the floor. In some cases, I was able to clamp the hose to the workbench but this wasn’t always an option so I wanted to find a way to suspend the hose midair at about workbench height (or higher). The solution I came up with was to have a pivoting arm that would support the hose. This project was very much also an opportunity to use up scrap materials I had in the shop and I built it as I went. It’s mostly broken down into three sections:

1. Figuring out the pivoting portion — the orientation and relief cuts needed to allow the arm to swing up and down

2. Figuring out a way to lock the arm in the up position

3. Figuring out a way to loosely secure the hose to the boom arm

Building the Pivot

I actually originally debated using drawer slides and that may be an option - I just didn’t have any extra long-slides handy

Building the Stop/Hold-down

The stop is designed to hold the arm in the extended position as well as counter any weight being leveraged against it. I debated slides, magnets or even just manually bolting it down. In the end, I settled on having a captive bolt and a star-knob.

Securing the Hose to the Boom

This was a bit of a tricky problem to solve: I wanted to make sure the hose didn’t flop around too much but I also didn’t want to completely cinch the hose down and make it a permanent attachment (since I have a need to switch hoses from time to time).

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There are a few small improvements I’ve made to the cart that make it a bit nicer to use: hooks on the back to act as a cord wrap and switching out the 7-ft hose that came with the vacuum with a custom cut length of 2-1/2 dust hose. All in all, this cart has the following bits:

• Ridgid WD1680 wet-dry vac: this was a high-performance vac (2½ hose, 153CFM and a somewhat questionable ‘6.5HP [peak]’ rating). I installed both a filter bag and the HEPA filter

• For filtration

  • A HEPA filter for the vac

  • A large filter bags - this is primarily to keep the cleanup process simpler; I’ve also used reusable fabric filter bags in the past

  • Woodstock Mini Cyclone - this does okay for separation; compared to the Dust Deputy, this is roughly on par for larger chips but it feels slightly less effective for fine dust (i.e., sanding)

• For hoses and connections:

  • In addition to the stock hose, I use the excellent Rockler Dust Right hose kit; I throw a 2-1/2 flex cuff on there to let me quickly link to the 2-1/2 hose

  • A 90-degree elbow - yes, there is airflow loss from the sharp turn but for my setup, the airflow is still sufficient for what I need

  • 2-1/2” flex hose - having a to-length hose sure beats figuring a way to snake the (relatively) long stock hose (this hose is ‘left-handed’)

  • 2-1/4 by 2-1/2 quick coupler - this threaded connector allows us to simply twist onto the hose end for a nice snug fit (this is ‘left-handed’ as well)

  • 2-1/2 Left-handed bridge clamps - bridge clamps are awesome! You can clamp them over the ribbing on hoses without mangling them. You do need to match left-hand and right-hand bridge clamps with their respective hoses

Lastly, a 2-1/2 muffler - this is not even remotely “a sound thing” — think of it as a toroidal diffuser. Good for dispersing the exhaust out the back of the vacuum so it doesn’t kick up even more dust in your shop. If you happen to see this on sale, by all means, but it’s definitely not as big a deal as the rest

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