Effective Scroll Saw Dust Collection Jig

Welcome back guys, it's the Tightwad and today I'm going to be doing a project with some of these parts. Some of you may be familiar with the product lock line. So I have two segments of three quarter inch lock line, two adapters that can screw into a PVC three quarter inch coupling and two nozzles. Also went ahead and purchased the lock line tool because it makes it easier to put the lock line together and take it apart. Then I have a two inch PVC T, a two inch to three quarter reducer, two of those. I have three three quarter inch, 90 degree angles and 145. I'm going to be using one or the other here, but I definitely will be using these two. I have two threaded, one side threaded three quarter inch couplings, a one foot section of two inch PVC pipe and several segments of three quarter inch pipe that I had left over from a previous project. And then I have my shop vac extension here. The project I'm going to be doing today is building a dust collection system for my Hawk RBI. This is the V220, but it will definitely apply to all of the Hawk RBI models and any other. You could adapt this for any scroll saw that you have actually. My concept is to run a dust port here that goes to my shop vac, split off one length of PVC that comes back here out of the way and then back over and the lock line will take over from here and I can adjust it down to the blade depending on the project I'm doing. From the dust port here, which will be the T, it will also come this way and go underneath my saw either this direction or from the front to pull the dust from this side. I think I'm probably going to try to go from the front, but I'm actually doing this project while I'm videoing. So you will see the end result. I'll test a few different methods to see which one seems to work the best. But this is a major dust producer and it produces really fine dust. You can see some of it still here from a previous cut. I cleaned it up as good as I could for the demonstration today. Especially when you cut things like MDF on here, it produces a very fine dust. I don't like wearing a dust mask while I'm cutting, but I do when I'm cutting certain types of wood and I'm hoping this will eliminate the need to wear a dust mask. I do have an overhead air filtration system. It's the Grizzly brand. It does a decent job, but it's obviously not collecting at the source, which is what is preferred. So let's get started. I'm going to start with a dry assembly. So I'm going to take my two reducers and put them into the T, because that's where everything starts from. Then I need a length of three quarter inch pipe coming in both directions here. I'm going to go ahead and assemble the lock line. All right, so with my two lock line setups assembled, I can then screw them into the couplings here. And again, I'm just going to dry fit these. I have my two lock lines and my couplings installed and the pipe will just slip right into the other end here. So this is what it's going to look like. And I'm going to move over to the saw and get some of my measurements down. So with all the parts assembled, this is what I come to. I have one of the flexed hoses, lock line hoses coming to the bottom blade here. I have it down to my coupling here, threaded coupling, a length of three quarter inch PVC pipe. The reducer from two to three quarter is right here. This is where my shop vac hose will connect. I'll actually have a little length of two inch PVC pipe coming off here that I've welded or molded to be an adapter to my shop vac. I have a small length of three quarter inch PVC here, three quarter inch elbow, three quarter inch PVC, three quarter inch elbow, a long run to another threaded coupling and down to the lock line setup that will be adjustable both in and out. And then I can also adjust the lock line itself to mold to the piece that I need to do. So I think this is going to work well. I put this as far back as I could so that the hose stays out of the way while I'm scrolling. And I don't see any point of interference here. I still actually have access to the slot that I use to loosen the blade holder whenever I'm changing blades. So the only thing I have to do is create the adapter here and then find a way to fasten this down to the saw itself. There's nothing under the saw here. So my plan is to drill some holes right here and just use zip ties. And eventually I'll get a U-bolt and make it a permanent fixture right here. But just a simple zip tie right here should hold everything down. So now I'm going to go through the process of drilling some holes right here. I'm just going to use a single zip tie for now for all the testing of this project to make sure everything works as I want it to. I think it's going to be a good solution. But now, as I said, the next thing I need to do is to make an easy way for my shop vac to connect. So I have a length of 2-inch PVC pipe I'm going to cut off about right here to try to mold it and make a shop vac hose adapter. So the shop vac hose is too large to go directly into the 2-inch pipe fitting. And it's also the same inside diameter as PVC pipe itself. So I'm going to heat up the end of this PVC pipe and work this in there to make a good snug fit. And then I'll cut the PVC pipe off to the correct length here, and the PVC pipe will extend from the pipe fitting out a little bit for me to plug in my dust collection system. So this is how I made the PVC adapter. I took the PVC outside and heated it up with a blowtorch. You can see I got some burn marks on it. People say do it with a heat gun. PVC is flammable, by the way, and it could possibly release toxic chemicals. I didn't do a ton of research into that because I did it outside with a fan blowing away from me. But I heated it up with a blowtorch, and then I shoved in the extension that I have for my shop vac. So this is the same size as the hose for my shop vac. So I shoved it in there, and you can see it actually molded to it. I cooled it down with water from the water spigot, and so now I can pull out my shop vac hose. And I now have an adapter that will go from 2 inch PVC into the T straight into my shop vac. So I'm going to cut this off and attach it to the jig that I made over here, and we'll see how it works. Alright, so I have it pretty much done. I added two more zip ties here. Again, those will be U-bolts later so I can actually tighten them down nice and tight, and they'll hold everything firmly in place. But right now it's pretty secure. I was able to hook up my shop vac to it and adjust it so that the nozzles are close but out of the way. I gave it a spin and nothing hit anywhere. So I'm eager to try a test cut this evening on this to see how it does when cutting MDF. Alright, I made a couple of adjustments. My top feed end still comes to the blade, but my bottom one I brought farther towards the front and hooked it around where it points directly in front of the blade. I'll look from this way too. This tends to catch a little more of the bigger dust. All the fine dust is being collected from the cutting of the MDF, and I also added a couple more tie straps here and here by just drilling the holes right here, and everything is as secure as it needs to be right now. So I'm going to show you a test cut with MDF. I'll cut a few seconds just to show you how much dust it produced before turning on the dust collection system, and then I'll show you the rest of the cut with the dust collection system running and show you how much better it does. I don't feel like I have to wear a mask anymore. I only wear hearing protection now because of the noise from the shop vac, which I intend to move to another room as soon as I get a longer hose, but I'll show you what I've got going here. Alright, this first cut is going to be done with no dust collection turned on. My shop vac is turned off completely. I've got the dust port completely moved out of the way so you can tell it's not sucking on anything. I'm just going to make a short cut here and show you how much dust is created. You won't be able to see the fine stuff, but you'll see the more thick stuff that comes off of here. I'm going to go ahead and get started now. You can see it's already starting to collect on the top, and that's why you have your spray nozzle. So I'll pull that down. I don't even need this anymore with the new system, but I'll blow some of the dust out of the way. This cut was for about a minute and a half. Alright, so with the saw off, you can now see all the stuff that's collected just on the top here, just from that small cut. All I did was this triangle cut right here. And then underneath the saw, you'll see I have a hefty pile of very fine dust. And I was also breathing some of it in because I wasn't wearing my mask this time. So I'm going to get this cleaned up, and I'm going to do a different cut with the dust collection on and show you the difference after I'm done. Alright, so as you can hear, I have my dust collection going now. Both nozzles are in position, and I'll go ahead and get started. This is approximately five minutes of cutting, and I sped it up just to save time for the video. I'm going to lift the dust collection out of the way, and we'll come down and inspect. And you'll see the top of the piece has no dust on it, not even fine stuff that I can pick up on my fingers. The bottom piece is cut out completely here, and then underneath, you'll see we have very minimal dust at all. So I would say this contraption that I've built is a huge success, eliminating the need for wearing a dust mask when scrolling, unless I was doing some kind of exotic woods, which I don't really work with much. But even from the MDF, I don't taste or smell any of the dust that you typically get. There's a tiny bit right here around the blade area, which is protected by the piece and doesn't fall through, so no dust collection is really going to get that. But let me know your thoughts, let me know if there's anything you think I should add to it or to make it better. If you found this video helpful, give me a thumbs up, it really helps out. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below. And make sure you subscribe to my channel. And I hope you guys have a great day.