Modified Harbor Freight Dust Collector Video 2 - 065

Let me show you what I'm doing here to mark all my circles. Obviously, this is all circle pieces, so I need to have a fairly accurate way of marking them. I do need to make a large compass jig that's nice and permanent for the shop, but I don't have time to make one right now. So what I did is I've got two pieces of 3 quarter inch by however long scrap pieces of... This is actually engineered hardwood flooring. And what I've done is I've just sandwiched a brad nail in between the two and I've screwed drywall screws on either side of that brad nail to just pinch it in place. It split the flooring, but who cares because it is secure and this is just temporary. What I'm doing is I'm trying to mark out a diameter of 20 and 5 eighths inch for the outside diameter. So I've got my rule here and I can use my brad nail to just point at zero and then slide my pencil in between right at half of 20 and 5 eighths, which is 10 and 5 sixteenths. And as I have it in place, I can just take one of these pressure clamps and clamp it in place. Just to verify real quick, zero and 10 and 5 sixteenths. So I've got my compass, temporary compass to mark out all my circles. Like I said, I want to make a nice one down the road, but for right now, this will work. I've also taken and found my center and taken this nail and just started a hole. Started a hole just to give me something to pivot on. Whoops. Alright, now I've got my outside diameter. This side will face the can. So I need to route a half inch dado along this line. Alright, for the router circle jig, same thing. I don't have one. I need to make one. So I've just made a temporary one. I'm taking this same pivot for the compass and I've just clamped it to my router and made sure that the point to the outside of this router bit is 10 and 5 sixteenths. And verified that by just setting it in place and looking underneath and the outside of the bit does touch this line. So I'm going to verify that this clamp is on there properly and it looks safe. And then I will just gradually drop the bit about an eighth of an inch every rotation until I get it, I don't know, about a half inch or so deep. Now for the second piece to go below the baffle, this is where the baffle is actually going to sit into. So I want this outside diameter to be really snug up against the baffle. So it's about 19 and a quarter inches, so I'm going to start at about a little bit less than 9 and 5 eighths from the outside of the bit to the pivot point. And I'm going to make a shallow cut and see how well it fits. And I'm probably going to have to increase the distance just a little bit until I get a very snug fit. And then once I get that, I will drop down about half the thickness of this piece of MDF and create a dado for it to sit in. Now once I have the dado cut for it to sit in, I can start lining out the actual cutout for the baffle itself. So I've got this set and I'm going to make a first shallow cut and see how well this fits. Alright, so I've got my top piece that's going to go below the baffle. And I've routed out a groove that the baffle sits in pretty snug. And I've taken and just marked approximately where my intake is going to be. And that is just mainly for reference as I finish this. But my intake is right here, so basically right here, 270 degrees, and then stopping, I need to make a cutout. That is, the Thene website says approximately 1 and 1 eighth of an inch. However, I've read some reviews, people who did this exact setup, and they said that the performance increased if you went to 1 and a quarter. So I'm going to go from about halfway through this dado, because that's pretty much where the thickness of the cylinder is. So about halfway through here, and then I'm going to go 1 and 1 quarter inch. And then make a circle, and I'm going to cut out 270 degrees of that. Well this is as far as I got last night, and I went home and did a little bit more research on this. And a couple corrections, this ring does not come out, he left it in there, so that's correction number one. And also, my 270 degrees is supposed to be 240 degrees, so I've got to measure out where I'm at. And then on my top ring, I'm going to cut out the gap, and then just transfer that, maintaining center, I'm going to transfer that to the one below. And probably just use a jigsaw on the one below, just to get it somewhat close. Also on the one below, the reason I'm going to use a jigsaw is because I'm not going to make a slot. This top one is going to have the slot, the bottom one is going to have actually a rather large pie-shaped cutout. And the reason being, is this right here is a little thin, and I want to have the added thickness right here. I don't need the added thickness all the way across this thing, so I'm just going to make a peninsula, I guess you could say, coming out to the middle to kind of support the baffle. And that should be plenty. Alright, now that I've got my baffle cut all the way around, 240 degrees, and I've got this channel right on the outside for the, or this lip right on the outside for the ring to fit in, I'm going to round over these corners with a roundover bit, and then make this nice and neat right here, and also right there. Alright, I've got the bottom piece sitting inside the lip in the can, and I've got the top piece positioned where I need to. I need to transfer this mark, this outside diameter of the hole cutout, to the bottom one. So what I've done is I've pushed my nail all the way through, actually did that with a drill, and stuck a nail in here to line both pieces up. And I just put a drywall screw here in the corner, just so I know that I have a reference point once I want to put this back together. And I'm just going to trace that out, cut it out, and then put the baffle on, or put the ring on, and we can work on the top piece.