Shopsmith Forums

I had a lot of narrow rips to make. Too narrow to use the upper blade guard that I modified with dust collection. It was making quite the mess and also affection my breathing! Suddenly a thought popped into my head and I had to follow through to see if it would work. It did with amazing results.







It's just a simple block of wood. I was going to make it for the 2 1/2" vacuum hose but I didn't have the correct size drill bit so I tried it out with the 27MM AKA 1 3/8" drill hole







Realize all the dust is from the earlier ripping.







You can see that I am well into the cut and there is no dust on the board at all. I could see a little flying around but it may have just been blowing the dust around that was already there. At the very least I didnt get a face full of alder! I will try this with the larger hose when I get a 2 1/4"bit.







On the left you can see a very long push stick that I made to be able to push the boards past the blade. I wouldn't recommend this on boards shorter than 2' and a riving knife (which I need to get) would be a requirement.

What if you add an "L" shaped spacer to the fence that would give the clearance needed for the upper guard? If I could reverse the "L" I would've.

I'm a little surprised that it works so well with the DC hose located so close to the front of the blade. I would have thought it would do the best job when catching the saw dust as the gullets come up out of the cut (in the rear).

dusty wrote:I'm a little surprised that it works so well with the DC hose located so close to the front of the blade. I would have thought it would do the best job when catching the saw dust as the gullets come up out of the cut (in the rear).

That was my initial thought as well Dusty. I played with moving it around and the location in the front seem to work better. It might be from the inertia of the blade slinging the chips forward.

Wonderful... Gonna have to use that simple solution. Thank you for sharing.

I like this idea.

Way back when I first got my shopsmith it had the old metal upper guard and I really really disliked it and did not use it most of the time. I would sometimes put it on for rip cuts as the amount of sawdust that is thrown at you is amazing. I would be covered from head to waist. The same sort of thing happened when I would rip with at radial arm saw. The saw dust does come forward for what ever reason and I can see how this system would help with that.

It will not help with some cases of kickback but if you have the non-through cut knife installed that would help. It is not clear what effect having the backside coming up would have, help to block it or help to guide it???

I too have a home made upper guard hose attachment, well just a hole in the upper guard that I can attach a hose to but it really helps getting rid of the sawdust and of course blocks the stuff thrown forward at you. I did have to make slight adjustment when not using a hose I plug the hole as it certainly lets the dust out.

I'd like to get back to the whole dust collection system on the shopsmith. After using the festool set up the lack of dust is quite noticeable and I like that. If the shopsmith could do as well it would make me a much happier user.

Ed

Necessity is the mother of invention. Elegantly done.

Everett

Very cool. Will try that today !
Paul

I discovered that by rotating this I can center it on very narrow rips.