Dust Collection: A Workbench Solution

Larry Heinonen

A basic setup can make for some amazing results.

I've read quite a bit the past few days about shop dust collection. I thought I'd share one solution I built about 20 years ago.

There're two basic forms of dust collection. Point of use dust collection and dust filtration. The first one is simply hooking your table saw, chop saw, planer or what have you to a dust collector. By far the best because it's collecting the lion's share of the dust you produce when you produce it. The second one is filtering ambient air when the dust becomes airborne. Not nearly as efficient but still necessary if we want to breathe easier.

About 20 years ago my dad gave me the blower out of a furnace. It sat around in my garage for a while until one day I concluded I needed to build a sanding table. What you see in the pictures is my simple solution. Built entirely out of scrap plywood particle board and hardwood. With a piece of pegboard I got at the lumber yard. I also included an outlet to plug my sanders in while I'm working so I don't have to run a cord over to the sanding table. And finally, like every other piece of equipment in my shop (which occasionally gets used as a garage) I put some casters on it so I can easily move it around. With a flip down foot to lift one set of wheels off the ground when it's in use to keep it from scooting around.

It does a pretty fair job as a sanding table. And even while I'm running the table saw with a dust collector connected to it, there is still sawdust produced on top of the table that gets airborne. Many people build essentially a box with a blower inside that sucks air through a filter media on one end and blows the cleaned air out the other end. Often these are mounted to the ceiling. My sanding table essentially doubles its duty by working as a sanding table (and like any available flat surface in the shop, also a collection point when I'm not using it for all kinds of things) and filtering out ambient dust from the air. I used common 16-inch by 25-inch pleated furnace filters on top of which I lay a half inch thick paint booth type filter media. Both get taken outside periodically with my air hose and blown out. And both are easy and inexpensive to replace from time to time.

Work safe!

If you have any questions or want to chat about this, find me on Facebook in The Woodworking Group!