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After perusing the forums (and stealing a few ideas), this is my first attempt at a dust shoe. 1m x 1m Xcarve. Dewalt 611 router. This is a “fixed” shoe, ie, it mounts to the X carriage not the Z. I machined the vertical supports and base out of a sheet if 1/8 aluminium as one piece, then bent it 90 degrees. The rest of the base is a piece of 3/8 polycarbonate with a 2in hole for the router (probably a bit too big) and a 4+in hole for the dust hose. The vertical tube is thin wall 4in drain pipe glued into the clear base and the 4in dust hose connects at the top. I glued velcro around the perimeter of the base plate then cut a narrow skirt from matching velcro and added slits because… it seemed like the cool thing to do. Attaching the skirt with velcro makes it really easy to remove the skirt or make different height ones as the need arises. I slotted the vertical aluminium supports thinking I would drill holes in the carriage and put bolts… but for now I’m just clamping it in place with a couple of small wood clamps… which I kinda like and will probably just do that for the foreseeable future.
I’ve done a few projects with it… and it seems to do a great job. The 3hp dust collector on 4in hose helps too… a little
I’ve been wanting to use my dust collector also, for the moment I’ve been clamping the flex hose to the wasteboard near the project and living with that.
I’ve been using a shopvac dust shoe attached to the dewalt, but I’ve decided that I want to go to a shoe that isn’t mounted to the router, after using a longer end mill on a project cause lots of dust everywhere (since the brush didn’t reach the surface.
-Kelly
