Thread: sawstop overhead dust

Have a look at these. Excellent reviews online, I was considering one a while ago.


https://www.thesharkguard.com

Here are a few to look at. I don't see why an overhead hood/guard should be specific to Saw Stop machines other than attaching it to the original riving knife. In fact leaving the riving knife in place and using a floating hood has a big advantage when doing cuts that the hood/guard needs to be removed for.

overhead dust hood for sawstop - Google Search

overhead dust hood for tablesaws - Google Search

I made a slightly modified version of this one. Very happy with it. I attach my Festool dust extractor to it. Any shopvac would work.

Dust-Free Blade Cover | Woodworking Project | Woodsmith Plans

Originally Posted by jack620

I made a slightly modified version of this one. Very happy with it. I attach my Festool dust extractor to it. Any shopvac would work.

Dust-Free Blade Cover | Woodworking Project | Woodsmith Plans

That design does has a couple of good features including; open at the back to let air in and air extracted at the correct location ie in front of blade
Screen Shot 2021-04-16 at 5.51.26 am.jpg

However, there are still a couple of things that I can see with it ;
- the front riser plate (that lifts the hood when a workpiece is pushed up against it) seems a bit low, it should be as least at tall as the clearance/support behind the saw or the max height the blade can cut. This looks like an easy fix.
- the use of solid colour will reduce visibility - not just direct line of sight but also will block lighting. A fully transparent material like polycarbonate would be better.
- using a vac is not going to collect as much fine dust as a large DC. This is not really a problem when the guard if fully down over the workpiece but becomes an issue near and at the end of a cut when the hood is being held up off the table by the workpiece generating a gap between the end of the hood and the table. At this point the blade throws stuff forward along the table and while the chips that escape are not the problem, the fine dust that can't be seen is, and if not grabbed is squirted out across the table into the workshop. One way to grab this fine dust is with a high volume flow but the down side is that shoehorning a 4" duct into such a hood has issues the main one is it makes the hood bulkier and heavier.

only need to add a REALLY GOOD dust/vac system.

But they seem to be easy to fabricate.

I built ond the same as Jack620 posted about. Here’s a link to my posts which include videos of it in action. It worked extremely well

Installing my Dusty - WIP

In the end I got rid of it because:
1) I used ply in the construction and it was very heavy. Maybe foam filler or a total perspex build would be better?

2) I didn’t have a riving knife or splitter to mount it off and the overhead mounting was a pain.