We do a lot of sanding for our small-boat restorations and builds, and have relied upon a shop vacuum to collect dust. It does the job but leaves us with bags to empty and filters to clean or replace, which is messy and costly. That changed when we bought an Oneida Dust Deputy cyclone separator to collect the dust on its way to the Shop-Vac. The device uses the centrifugal force of a cyclonic airflow to separate dust and heavier particles, drops the debris into a collection bucket, and sends cleaned air to the vacuum. The collection bucket is easy to empty, and we can use the Shop-Vac without the HEPA bags and even without them, the filter rarely needs to be cleaned. The kit for the Dust Deputy includes a pair of 5-gallon buckets: one to gather dust or even water, and another nested below it that has casters and an attachment to the Shop Vac so the whole system can move as one unit.
Photograph by the authors
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I love my Dust Deputy too. My only complaint was that the system of attaching it to the shopvac was not very stable and when I pulled, it too often fell over. I found some excellent plans from Woodsmith Plans for a cart that holds both. Works great and I highly recommend it.
I’ve owned one of these units for several years, and I love it. I no longer have to continuously clean the fine dust out of the filter in the shop vac to keep it working properly. I had the same stability issue that Ian mentioned, and I built a simple four-wheeled cart large enough for both the the dust collector and shop vac.
It’s an amazing coincidence that I had just stopped from using a homemade version of this system on my back deck, that I’m sanding the fix-all filler in prep for a elastameric coating, to answer the phone, and while talking I found this article. I just opened the vacuum and it is completely clean inside. These systems are well worth the investment in filters lasting nearly for ever to make it a no brainer. I only wish I had known about this 50 or 60 years ago.