Little by little I make progress on the installation of the Clearvue. I became frustrated in my efforts to find 6" ports, and decided to make them myself. As luck would have it, McMaster Carr carries acrylic tubing with an outside diameter of 6", which fits splendidly into the 6" 2729 pipe. I was a little shocked that a 12" piece of this tubing was $30 delivered. More on that later, though.
I inherited this old classic iron from my Pops. It's a Craftsman, probably from the 1940s, and it does NOT stop turning for any reason. That big old Milwaukee 6" holesaw puts a lot of stress on a lightweight drill, but this heavy iron doesn't even know it's there.
I used the holesaw (actually, I chucked it in the DP for this operation) to cut neat holes in hardboard, and then sliced off a section of the acrylic tube, and then mixed up some clear epoxy, and eureka, 6" dust ports.
The one on the left will be attached to the side of the router table, the one on the right will get a coat of Powermatic Gold and attach to the PJ882.
With the holesaw chucked into the old Craftsman, I sliced a neat hole in the metal lid of the dustbin and attached more expensive acrylic tubing. I then slipped the flex tube over the acrylic tubing and went crazy with the silicone.
<- top view underside -> 
Now, I had really stressed over how to get the ducting from outside the shed into the shed. I knew the 2729 was 6-1/4" OD, and my old reliable holesaw cut 6", not 6-1/4". I had learned early in life that you cannot shove a larger diameter pipe into a smaller diameter pipe. Just cain't do it! All sorts of ideas had revolved through the gray matter, and nothing good came of it. Until I got the acrylic tube. Eureka! The tube will fit through a hole cut with the holesaw, and will fit inside the 2729 pipe. Here's a shot from inside showing the tube slipped inside the PVC.
Notice the studs on each side of the pipe. Lack of forward planning had placed the stud bay dimension at 6-1/2". By sheer random luck it wasn't 6". There wasn't much room to work, and without the holesaw and old Craftsman drill, I'd still be wondering how to do this. And reading about your adventures instead of sharing mine with y'all.
Anyway, a generous application of silicone made the tube fast within the PVC and did a fine job of weatherproofing the connection.
-and- 
The Clearvue has a ramped feed into the cyclone, and that means the inlet tube is not parallel to the floor. To cure that problem, I fabricated this beautiful piece of work:
I mitered the 2729 with the bandsaw and tried to use PVC glue to glue the ends. No joy. So, I cleaned the PVC with ugly purple cleaner and daubed a bodacious quantity of expoy at the seam. I applied the standard test after 12 hours ( i.e., dropped it on the floor several times) and it held up nicely. This ungainly thing will adjust the angle of the uptake line so it will align properly with the main trunk entering through a vent in in the block foundation.
If anybody knows a more elegant way to rejoin mitered PVC, let's hear about it. There's a whole lotta glues out there, and epoxy can be a mess. However, epoxy has NEVER let me down.
Here's a side by side of the factory dust port and the homemade port. Note that the proper color has yet to be applied. The 6" port is about 28 sq inches, and the 4" is only 12.5 sq inches.Half again as large in diameter, but over double in area. The power of R squared, I guess.
Okay, let's talk about the exorbitant cost of that acrylic tubing. At $30/foot, that's about $2.50 per inch. Takes your breath away, doesn't it. However, the flimsy plastic dust ports cost $5.95. I made mine with 2" of tubing, $0.79 worth of epoxy, and scrap. So my ports cost $5.79. And I could NOT find any 6" ports locally or over-the-net. There's about $10 worth of tubing making that thru-wall connection. Considering the effort saved by being able to use the holesaw and having a very neat hole to weatherproof, that was a bargain. But it's still darned expensive stuff.
I'm going to use more of the tubing to pass the ductwork through the floor. I can cut the holes with the Milwaukee and Craftsman rig and make a nice, neat job of it. And for what it's worth, the circular rare earth magnets described below do a marvelous job of finding the nails in the hardwood floor. You just slide them along the seam and when they get within an inch of a nail they leap forward and take up position directly over the head. By marking out the nail heads, I should be able to determine a hole location that will miss the nails and save the old Milwaukee holesaw.
While I was taking pics for y'all (you do like pics, right?), I snapped a shot of my KDQS Sycamore offset gauges. One is a nibbler offset, the other is a cutoff offset. They were carefully and lovingly planed and the dimension verified by Mr. Wixey as well as Mr. Chan (he make for you the caliper digitals in WongSang province) at 1.125" and 1.000".
I drilled 3/4" holes in the bottom and put rare earth magnets encased in epoxy ( are you getting the idea that I enjoy working with epoxy?).
And finally here's a picture of a house critter who is scared to death to enter the shop. In this shot, he's guarding the hot dog bun that he won't eat, but instead carries all over the yard. His name (for real) is Governor Easley. I added this to make Mama happy, because we all know if Mama ain't happy...
I inherited this old classic iron from my Pops. It's a Craftsman, probably from the 1940s, and it does NOT stop turning for any reason. That big old Milwaukee 6" holesaw puts a lot of stress on a lightweight drill, but this heavy iron doesn't even know it's there.
I used the holesaw (actually, I chucked it in the DP for this operation) to cut neat holes in hardboard, and then sliced off a section of the acrylic tube, and then mixed up some clear epoxy, and eureka, 6" dust ports.
The one on the left will be attached to the side of the router table, the one on the right will get a coat of Powermatic Gold and attach to the PJ882.
With the holesaw chucked into the old Craftsman, I sliced a neat hole in the metal lid of the dustbin and attached more expensive acrylic tubing. I then slipped the flex tube over the acrylic tubing and went crazy with the silicone.
<- top view underside -> Now, I had really stressed over how to get the ducting from outside the shed into the shed. I knew the 2729 was 6-1/4" OD, and my old reliable holesaw cut 6", not 6-1/4". I had learned early in life that you cannot shove a larger diameter pipe into a smaller diameter pipe. Just cain't do it! All sorts of ideas had revolved through the gray matter, and nothing good came of it. Until I got the acrylic tube. Eureka! The tube will fit through a hole cut with the holesaw, and will fit inside the 2729 pipe. Here's a shot from inside showing the tube slipped inside the PVC.
Notice the studs on each side of the pipe. Lack of forward planning had placed the stud bay dimension at 6-1/2". By sheer random luck it wasn't 6". There wasn't much room to work, and without the holesaw and old Craftsman drill, I'd still be wondering how to do this. And reading about your adventures instead of sharing mine with y'all.
Anyway, a generous application of silicone made the tube fast within the PVC and did a fine job of weatherproofing the connection.
-and- The Clearvue has a ramped feed into the cyclone, and that means the inlet tube is not parallel to the floor. To cure that problem, I fabricated this beautiful piece of work:
I mitered the 2729 with the bandsaw and tried to use PVC glue to glue the ends. No joy. So, I cleaned the PVC with ugly purple cleaner and daubed a bodacious quantity of expoy at the seam. I applied the standard test after 12 hours ( i.e., dropped it on the floor several times) and it held up nicely. This ungainly thing will adjust the angle of the uptake line so it will align properly with the main trunk entering through a vent in in the block foundation.
If anybody knows a more elegant way to rejoin mitered PVC, let's hear about it. There's a whole lotta glues out there, and epoxy can be a mess. However, epoxy has NEVER let me down.
Here's a side by side of the factory dust port and the homemade port. Note that the proper color has yet to be applied. The 6" port is about 28 sq inches, and the 4" is only 12.5 sq inches.Half again as large in diameter, but over double in area. The power of R squared, I guess.
Okay, let's talk about the exorbitant cost of that acrylic tubing. At $30/foot, that's about $2.50 per inch. Takes your breath away, doesn't it. However, the flimsy plastic dust ports cost $5.95. I made mine with 2" of tubing, $0.79 worth of epoxy, and scrap. So my ports cost $5.79. And I could NOT find any 6" ports locally or over-the-net. There's about $10 worth of tubing making that thru-wall connection. Considering the effort saved by being able to use the holesaw and having a very neat hole to weatherproof, that was a bargain. But it's still darned expensive stuff.
I'm going to use more of the tubing to pass the ductwork through the floor. I can cut the holes with the Milwaukee and Craftsman rig and make a nice, neat job of it. And for what it's worth, the circular rare earth magnets described below do a marvelous job of finding the nails in the hardwood floor. You just slide them along the seam and when they get within an inch of a nail they leap forward and take up position directly over the head. By marking out the nail heads, I should be able to determine a hole location that will miss the nails and save the old Milwaukee holesaw.
While I was taking pics for y'all (you do like pics, right?), I snapped a shot of my KDQS Sycamore offset gauges. One is a nibbler offset, the other is a cutoff offset. They were carefully and lovingly planed and the dimension verified by Mr. Wixey as well as Mr. Chan (he make for you the caliper digitals in WongSang province) at 1.125" and 1.000".
I drilled 3/4" holes in the bottom and put rare earth magnets encased in epoxy ( are you getting the idea that I enjoy working with epoxy?).
And finally here's a picture of a house critter who is scared to death to enter the shop. In this shot, he's guarding the hot dog bun that he won't eat, but instead carries all over the yard. His name (for real) is Governor Easley. I added this to make Mama happy, because we all know if Mama ain't happy...
