It’s just a 15 minute job
Posted by woodworker on October 8th, 2006
So I started to build my dust collector for my radial-arm saw (RAS), and began to get together the materials to build it. This shouldn’t take long, after all, it was just a small box with a hole cut in it. The wood was no problem, and I had plenty of 4″ hose to make the short connector, and then I pulled out the 4″ OD plastic pipe I had found last summer laying beside the road. It had been set aside for just this type of project, and after trueing up the end, I cut off a 5″ section to become the adapter end that my Jet dust collector (DC) needs.
That’s when I found out I had rescued a 4.5″ pipe.
No problem, I’ll just cut a slice out of the pipe, squeeze it together, and with the help of some HVAC tape and a couple of hose clamps, I’ve got my 4″ connector.
I did a few high school Geometry calculations, and figured out the circumference of a 4″ pipe should be 12.5″. All I had to do was mark off 12.5″ around the 4.5″ pipe, remove the excess, and when pressed together, I’ve got a 4″ pipe.
Ever try to roll a piece of slick plastic pipe across your workbench and not have it slip? I solved the measuring problem by borrowing my wife’s measuring tape from her sewing basket (it really was a basket!), and using that to mark my cuts.
Since I had always intended to make short connector adapters for all my tools that could be hooked up to the Jet DC, I cut three more slices from the pipe, marked them up and then used my bandsaw to remove the required slices.
Then I got out the tape, cut a 8″ section and tried bending the pipe into the smaller circumference. This is a three, or better yet, a four handed job. That pipe didn’t want to bend to my will, to I decided to weaken it. As you can see in the photos, I went back to the bandsaw and made a series of shallow cuts. This isn’t quite as effective on plastic as it is on wood, but it did make it easier to bend. I could apply about 1/2 the tape, leaving the waxed paper on the rest, squeeze the pipe into shape, and then pull the rest of the waxed paper off with my teeth as I rolled the pipe against my workbench to press the tape down. It took a couple of tries at first, but ultimately I got them all done.
Then I cut the flexible 4″ pipe to about 2′ lengths, made their connections to the PVC pipe adapters, and then I began to make the wooden box for the RAS. By then it was past 7PM, so I called it a day.
Here is a couple of shots of the reduced diameter adapters:
