This project has been done for a while, but only recently was I able to test it enough to determine that it does in fact work well enough to justify the setup: a dust hood for the Wagner Safe-t-planer.
Inspired by Jason Rodgers at MIMF, I went down to the Chinese restaurant and got a large order of egg drop soup. After the soup was safely and warmly in my stomach, the container was washed and cut, sewed to a strip of old computer mouse pad, and mounted to the quill of the drill press.
Here it is in place. Jason's setup is much simpler because he had a nice hunk of iron to attach to. I had to make a custom collar for the end of the quill, slide the hood around that, and then secure the hood with two smaller collar sections screwed to the inner collar. It's a bit of a pain dealing with the collar, but with practice I'm getting faster setting it up.
Here's a stack of eight boards, approximately 2x6x27, just off the planer.
Witness:
One small pile on the floor from taking about 1/8" off each face of each board in the pictured stack. Some three gallons in the 6.5A 1-1/4" Bucket Max (half the bucket load came from the previous round planing similar boards). Without the hood, each pass of the planer would spray dust in every direction, coat my left arm and every nook and cranny within three feet, and leave chips on the table that like to sneak under the work and lift it. This is a very satisfying improvement. Maybe if I used the 12 gallon shop vac, the basement would even clean itself while I work.
Bonus: Adding this 1.5 ton scissor jack under the drill press table greatly increased the stability of my whole planing operation. I highly recommend it.
