Shop Vac

[awhitecat]

I am building a small boat.



The time has come to purchase a Shop Vac for dust, sawdust etc. Yes - I have been banned from using my wife's Dyson!

I do not want to pay a large sum. However, I do not want one with paper bags.

Suggestions?

Thank you for your help. Mike

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I wouldn't dismiss vacuums with bags - they tend to last a lot longer and are cleaner to empty. Most bags can be picked up cheaply enough on Ebay.

 

[Wuffles]

Get a vac and a cyclone (or build one yourself). Rarely empty the bags on my vacs.


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[Eric The Viking]

You'd be remiss to not have filtration. The dangerous stuff is the smaller particles, as trapped by dust bags and motor filters*. Sucking up shavings and dealing with fine dust are really different tasks, but...

... We have a range of vacuums, including two Henries, which have HEPA filters. They're simple in construction, strong and with a lot of suck, and surprised me by not being expensive (from our local specialist vacuum shop, not even an online discounter!). Parts and spares are easy to find, too. One of them with a cyclone (as Wuffles said) should get everything, and your vac bag+filter will last ages.

I'd recommend the Lidl Parkside ones (whenever they come up as a deal) -- the ones with the power take-off that auto-switches the vacuum. They come with a short length of narrow hose, which fits my Makita sanders**, and I found to my delight this week that mine works with my router table, even with the NVR switch in-line. Powerful and the hose nozzle fits my Makita plunge saw directly without an adaptor..

Also look at these from Axminster: http://www.axminster.co.uk/numatic/. Numatic make the "Henry," and there are many common parts, which keeps cost of ownership down. Not the cheapest from Axminster but really well made and strong.

Cheap but good: Lidl's Parkside ones
British made and bomb proof: anything from Numatic (incl. Axminster ones and Henries).

Add a Chinese cyclone for about 70 quid all in, allowing for some adaptors. (your mileage, etc).

E.

*They usually actually don't trap the smallest stuff - you need a HEPA filter for that.

** I use a 2" length of 22mm foam pipe insulation as an adaptor, with a cable tie to stop it splitting. The narrow hose has a LH spiral and screws into one end of the insulation, which is the n just pushed onto the sander spigot.. Been working well like that for a year or so.

 

[MattRoberts]

I agree with Wuffles - a cyclone is the best solution because it allows for three stage filtration :

- The cyclone (catches 90% of dust & chips
- the bag (catches any tiny left overs)
- the vac filter catches the really really fine dust that's left over

I have the titan vac from screwfix, which also has the power socket on it for powering tools. Think it was about £50, and the bags are dead cheap (especially as a pack of 5 will last literally years with a cyclone solution)

 

[scosteve]

Another vote for the titan and cyclone. Can't fault it for anything, noise maybe its noisy with my ROS but silent with belt sander

Power takeoff only 1600w which is plenty for me

Good luck

 

[Harbo]

I use a cheapo MacAlister? From B&Q
Had it for several years without problems and has a power take off.

Rod

 

[awhitecat]

Reading the replies you have all helpfully posted the general consensus seems to be to have the shop vac with a cyclone dust collector.

I have a 35 litre drum.



I looked at these cyclones on Amazon.



Does anybody have experience with these particular ones? I noticed a post the other day on the For Sale section of this forum where somebody had bought a box of these and was selling them. Unfortunately they had all been sold. Are these things generic ie are they all really the same inside? I noticed that somebody advised installing a pressure relief valve.

Thank you all for your help again.

Regards,

Mike

 

[MattRoberts]

That drum is perfect, I have one very similar.

As for cyclone, I'd suggest one of the dust deputy clones (slightly different design) for no other reason than its what I have, and I can vouch for the robustness of the design. One on eBay with extra bits http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252335279795

You'd need to connect it up with a few bits depending on which vac you choose. I used a bunch of waste fittings from b&q

 

[awhitecat]

Thank you for that, Matt. I have just ordered one of those off ebay.

Nice trolley setup to move it all around. I doubt if I have enough room in my carport/garage! I have to crawl to get to the other side of the boat!

Regards,

Mike

 

[MattRoberts]

No worries. I didn't make the trolley until fairly recently, so it's not major hassle to shift the vac and cyclone around manually

 

[Steve Maskery]

That blue tub is (almost) perfect...

I have an identical one and have crushed it when the hose got blocked. They are VERY difficult to get back into shape ( had to use my car jack). I've now fitted it with a valve and it is better. It needs a bit of tweaking, the strength of the magnet is pretty critical, and once the tub has been crushed it is weaker and more prone to doing the same again.

If you can find one, I'd actually recommend a steel drum. I turned mine into a Thein separator. Both work well, but the cyclone route is much quicker and just as cheap.

BTW, Matt, I like your vertically integrated stand, very neat.

 

[Steve Maskery]

BTW, that cyclone is a slightly different shape to mine. That is like a bottle, mine is a cone, but I should imagine that it will work in exactly the same way.
What is very good about it is that it has a nice, wide, flange for mounting. Some have virtually no flange and rely on fitting it to a very precisely machined mating hole. With a flange you have more leeway and a better chance of sealing it properly with a gasket. I used the closed-cell foam that the cyclone itself came wrapped in and it works a treat.
S

 

[owsnap]

Henry hoover? Bought an used one for £30 when I was visiting someone in UK and it's brilliant, HEPA bags for it are also dirt cheap, like £0.30 for each. it just sucks and sucks and sucks...
works just perfect with my Sander and large mitre saw and just for general cleaning up.

 

[NazNomad]

I do love to see a workshop that's fully prepared for a zombie apocalypse ...

Oh wait, that's just hanging up, isn't it? :-( Get a bolt through there, don't be the first in your street to die. :lol:

 

[MattRoberts]

It's ok, they're held in with magnets too. I actually struggle to get them off! Which may cause an issue in the event of a zombie apocalypse

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Henry hoover? Bought an used one for £30 when I was visiting someone in UK and it's brilliant, HEPA bags for it are also dirt cheap, like £0.30 for each. it just sucks and sucks and sucks...
works just perfect with my Sander and large mitre saw and just for general cleaning up.

My friend spent his working life repairing domestic electrical goods and he swore by Henrys. (most of the vacuums he repaired were Dysons) He did say however that you really should always use a bag. If they fail and it's not a break in the lead (which in a vacuum it usually is, no matter what the make) quite often it is the contacts onto the circular copper strips which allow the lead to be rewound that break, and you can get bolt in ones. (Or at least you used to be able to).

 

[Eric The Viking]

My friend spent his working life repairing domestic electrical goods and he swore by Henrys. (most of the vacuums he repaired were Dysons)...

Exactly the same two points were made to me by our local vacuum cleaner shop.

And Henry was surprisingly inexpensive from them too - not as cheap as Lidl etc. obviously, but much cheaper than a Dyson and he's a lot quieter than my Parkside and Earlex ones. They also keep all sorts of odd spares, such as hose adaptors and spigots. Really handy having them just down the road

PS: just found this on their site:

"We at Homevac Electrics are sick and tired of seeing vacuum cleaners being scrapped. This is often due either to spares being unavailable or to the deliberate, prohibitive and uneconomic price for replacement motors. We cannot keep filling landfill with redundant vacuum cleaners!"

That gets my vote! But apparently they've stopped selling Henry now, because of the motor power reduction (the new EU regulations). They have an industrial equivalent instead (same bags and fittings). And they still mend Dysons although they don't sell them.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I worked on maintenance in a hotel so was used to getting handed stuff that was not working as it had been abused. The first port of call was always to check the lead for continuity (and the internal terminals in the case of Henrys) before they got taken somewhere else - I bet 9 out of 10 vacuums I ever touched had broken leads. I repeated this to my friend who informed me he had a very nice income from broken leads.
I solved a lot of the problem - I got flat rubber connectors and cut the ridge out of the casing with a Stanley knife so they held together, but not under tension so if they were yanked around the connector parted before the vacuum, the lead or the socket got damaged.