: I find Gorilla Tape to be the great "universal adaptor"
: :>

: This is a small Ryobi 5" ROS that I picked up at Home Despot

: . . .

: "Dust collection tube" is a piece of Shop Vac hose
: "sealed" with Gorilla Tape . . .
: Cheers,

: Sean

Shop vacs are cheap and great but a bit noisy, and if the fine dust gets into the motor or stops the exhausted air from passing across the motor it can soon be destroyed. There is a range of "Quiet Plus" Shop Vacs, I got one on sale only $10 more than the regular unit. It is quieter than my old vac and the motor has a separate fan so it won't overheat.

The outlet - which can be used as a blower - still makes a fair bit of noise. I found a length of 2-1/2" hose coiled up and attached to it muffled it and deflected the draft from my legs. Not as good as a proper dust extraction unit but a lot cheaper. The noisiest thing now is the cooling air from the motor, but it is now inaudible when any power tool in the shop is running.

Most of my portable power tools have dust hose attachments, many home-made using duct tape - I haven't tried Gorilla Tape yet. The most difficult one was the skilsaw (actually a B&D). I hammered a short length of Aluminum tube to fit between the baseplate and guard housing - I raise the blade to max, insert the tube then lower the blade to clamp the tube in place; a slot in the tube fits over a handy edge on the saw. The tube fits the samll shop vac hose hose.

For tools like the skilsaw and handheld power planer and sander that move a long way and generate a lot of dust, I installed an overhead pipe half-way along my workbench.

Sanders make a heck of a lot of dust most of which is fine and can float in the air for a while. I hung a 16" fan under the ceiling wired into the lighting circuit and taped a furnace filter over the intake, it takes that dust out of the air in minutes. For this purpose, the cheap fiberglass filters seem to work as well as the more costly pleated ones that are recommended for furnace use. I noticed that Lee Valley Tools now sell "air bags" that do the same thing but are a lot more expensive . . .