Lowest of Low-Tech

I’ve got a 12-inch radial arm saw down on the first floor of the barn, but it has not seen one second of activity since it was moved here thirteen years ago.  I’m just not doing anything that makes it necessary.  However, on the second (main) floor I’ve got a 10″ chop saw that gets used regularly to make long boards shorter for whatever reason.  For some tasks I use the cross-feed sled on the table saw but far more frequently I’m just chopping something up.

One of the great features of the chop saw is that it is quick and easy.  One of the lousy features is that it made a huge mess even when I hooked up the “dust collector” outlet to the shop vac.  Even when everything was hooked up properly sawdust went all over the place and it required a local cleanup with every use.

I finally got tired of this nuisance and made and installed the lowest possible tech solution, which reduces the sawdust cloud by about 99%.  I looked through my mountain of boxes piled up on the third floor and found one that fit my needs.  Equipped with a utility knife and a roll of masking tape I fabricated a box shroud to fit over the back side of the saw, complete with a port for the shop vac hose.  At this point the only thing missing is a fitting to glue to the portal for plugging in the hose, but even with just a rough hole cut in the side of the box the collection is magnificent.