Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Dust Right Vortex Review

One of the many challenges of woodworking in a basement shop is the dust and wood chips. You have several options to choose from when deciding what method to use in your shop. You can pick from a dedicated dust and chip collector, shop vacuum or broom and dust pan. Some of the challenges that one faces in a basement shop is space which limits the dust collection options and effectiveness.

For the longest time I managed to use my shop vac along with a broom and dust pan to manage my dust. As I took on the more and more projects the saw dust I was creating started to pile up. After exploring my options I decided to go with the Dust Right Vortex system as it had a few benefits for the basement shop.

The system is compact and it utilizes your existing shop vac so the cost is less than a dedicated collector. Having wheels on the canister makes it easy to move around your shop from tool to tool. When you are done for the day you can push it in to the corner and have it out of the way. Another positive for this unit is the 10 gallon canister that allows you to collect twice as much as some of the other smaller units on the market.

One of the draw backs does not deal with performance but rather the hose that is included in the purchase. The included hose is rather stiff and not as flexible as some of the other shop vac hoses. As I mentioned this does not affect the performance so it will be an item that gets replaced at some point.

After using the Dust Right system for a few months I am very pleased and would recommend this system to anyone working in their basement shops. Now that I do not have to worry so much about cleaning up dust and wood chips I can focus on getting my shop organized.