Router Dust Collection with the Oneida Router Hood
George VondriskaDescription
Routers make a mess, there are no two ways around around it. And it’s always been hard to achieve good router dust collection, at least until now. The new Universal Dust-Free Router Hood from Oneida Air Systems provides a great solution to the problem of dust coming pouring off of your hand-held router.
Attaching the hood
The Router Hood comes with a huge variety of hole choices for mounting to a router. I was able to easily put the base on routers from Bosch, DeWalt, and Porter Cable. Oneida has a nice chart of router the base will fit their web site. If you’re not sure about your machine, check out the list.
How effective is it?
I used the Router Hood for edge forming and freehand routing, and was very pleased with how well it worked. Connected to a standard shop vacuum, the hood easily picked up most of the dust and shavings my router created. I love that, not only was my shop cleaner, but I wasn’t getting a bunch of wood airborne and headed for my lungs.
Does it get in the way?
Having a hose connected to the router takes a little getting used to, but after just a few minutes I was comfortable with the set up. It’s worth going through the learning curve of having a hose connected in order to reap the benefits the hood offers.
For more info:
For more information on Oneida’s Router Hood visit their web page www.routerhood.com, or give them a call at (800) 732-4065.
More about routers and routing
Routers are incredibly versatile tools. Want to make certain you’re getting the most out of yours? Have a look at the great router videos that WWGOA offers.
Routers are great tools, but holy buckets, they make bucket loads of dust. So, if this is a problem for you, and I can't imagine it's not, if you ever use a router, you might be interested in this product from Oneida. We're gonna give it a run here. It's a hood with a universal base, that'll allow you to fasten this to any router, thanks to the multitude hole pattern here. So, let me get this one fastened on, and then we'll have a look at what it does, and how it does it, and how effective it is. Gonna be using this for an edge forming operation, so step one, set my depth to cut, that looks great. Then there's a little basket that goes on, and what that does is, it just really uber confines the dust here, and that will pivot, that'll work it's way around the bit, depending on what part of the router you're using. I'm gonna hook up a dust hose, get my router plugged in, and we can have a look at working this and making a cut. Well, if you've ever used a router, you've probably seen lots of dust come flying off the cutter, and by contrast, what a difference this makes. Here's what I'm gonna do next. I wanna rout this cool G, that my daughter, drew on there for me. So, that's gonna be a plunge router, same base on the, for dust collection purposes, and we'll have a look at the effect that has there. I'm gonna do a little free hand routing, of that big 'ol letter G, that Ginny made for me. So, where would dust collection be more important that this. If I don't get the dust out of there, it's gonna be really hard to see those lines, and really hard to free hand follow. So, let's see how she goes here. Well, that went well, and I think you can see that, with that dust shroud in place, it really does a good job of excavating the dust out of there, so it makes it easier for me to see what I'm working on. Additionally, it's keeping the air clear, so my lungs stay clear, that's very, very important. So, that dust shroud really is a nice feature to add to the router, gonna help keep the shop clean, and help keep me clean too.
Nice idea but way to fragile. Mine shattered first time I used it.