Super Easy Dust Collection Cart

Using a Dustopper from Home Depot, I pulled from other videos on YouTube and put together a really quick solution to space savings. This way I can drag around the whole unit to any location I need. This drastically reduces the need to clean or replace shopvac filters, saving you a lot of money.

Dustopper High Efficiency Dust Separator

PVC Fittings/Connectors

PVC 2 Inch Pipe

Bucket

Kobalt Compound Miter Saw (10 inch) I haven't been able to find the same version that I have, so I recommend the Dewalt 10-inch as I have had pretty good luck with Dewalt tools, but here is a link to some affordable 10-inch options at Home Depot.

Ryobi also makes an affordable option

Sanding Drum Kit

I also highly recommend picking up a cheaper miter saw stand and the most affordable options will be somewhere like Harbor Freight. Considering it's just a stand, I think you can go cheap on those.

Dewalt Table Saw

You can also sometimes get a deal on stands from other places on Amazon and/or even Lumber Liquidators, which is where I picked up mine a few years after I had already owned the Table Saw.

Milwaukee Hole Bits

I use a Skil Router, but I have noticed that Bosch offers more accessories that can be of great use. Also the combination fixed and plunge version that I use doesn't seem to be available.

I recently bought a smaller handheld Ryobi Router and love it:

Rockler Circle Cutting Jig is available on Amazon, here is a version available at Home Depot

Home Depot doesn't sell Craftsman, but they can be found still at Sears and Amazon. If you are interested, here are some options at Home Depot, but I recommend getting at least a 5hp vacuum and be careful to look at how they are designed to see if you can make a similar customization, some have changed (such as Rigid), to not include the cup/slots in the wheel units.

There are other dust collection options, such as a Dust Deputy. I really like the ease of use of the Dustopper because it seals simply to the 5 gallon bucket without modification. You can check other YouTubers for comparisons between the two.

**This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

Pick up the shopvac of your choice and hit up with Home Depot or Amazon for a Dustopper. The Dustopper fits snuggly over a simple 5 gallon bucket, we chose to use the simple Home Depot branded bucket, but we've seen them as cheap as $3 from Walmart.

Before you do this, make sure you cut a square large enough to facilitate the size of your shopvac, the placement of your casters, and the expected size of your PVC stand. We used a standard 2inch PVC for our whole build, but others have had to adjust for their shopvac and/or to get around the size/shape of the shopvac.

We cut ours approximately 22 inch x 22 inch out of some scrap 3/4 inch MDF we had laying around.

For our build, we cut the risers to approximately 32 inches and used a coupler, then a few more inches of pipe to use as a brace/stop block for the bucket mount. These measurements will completely depend on your shopvac, so be sure to cut more than you need so that you can trim it down if necessary later.

We found the center of our workpiece, drilled a small hole for use with our circle jig and router, and we cut a circle roughly the size of the bottom of the Home Depot bucket. The bucket itself does not have much of an angle to it (if any at all),so the size of the base should be the perfect size for the hole.

I used a drum sander I picked up cheap from Harbor Freight to sand the inner edge of the cut and dry fit the bucket for a tight fit.

To do this, I dry fit the PVC into the shopvac casters and did my best to accurately line up the MDF board. I used a can of spray paint to quickly mark where I would need the holes. I used a Milwaukee hole bit to cut them out.

I dry fit the unit to make sure it all fit snug enough, then I used another bucket (Lowes this time) as a guide to soften up the sharp corners. Once I used the jigsaw to trim that off, I used a quarter round bit over the entire outside of the unit and sanded everything clean.

I ended up deciding to brace the top by adding some cross members using T and Elbow fittings. This made the unit a lot more rigid. One key tip is to make sure you have enough room for the dustopper top. Although mine fits, it's very, very snug and it might have been better to align these braces higher, or potentially downsize them to get a little more space.

Well, after painting my unit I actually wish I had just bought black pipe or left it white. Overall it looks nice, but because it's such a tight fit around the dustopper, my paint is scraping off a little.

I did a quick test and as you can see from the pictures, most of the debris ended up in the bucket as opposed to in the shopvac, clogging up the filter.

Thanks for checking it out. Check us out on YouTube where you can find the videos of us making this tool (one of the build and one tweaking the final results and painting the unit).