wood shed plans

Deputizing the Dust Deputy

Deputizing the Dust Deputy

Way back in 2010 or so I bought a Dust Deputy. We were buying one for work and I figured what the hell, Ill get one too. When it arrived, I attached it to a 55 gallon drum. This worked well, but took up far too much shop space.

My original Dust Deputy setup.

So I traded my 55 gallon drum Deputy to my Dad for his unopened Dust Deputy. That Dust Deputy lived in its unopened box, in the corners of my shop, for years.


This spring, the wonderful experience I had with my Super Dust Deputy and my desire to go down from three (3) shop vacs to two (2) led me back to the unopened Dust Deputy. I figured that if I set it up on my CT Dust Extractor, I could then use that as both a dust extractor and a regular shop vac. This would allow me to get rid of the Clear Vue Ridgid Blower Vac Cyclone and go down to two (2) vacuums in the shop (the CT and the full cyclone).

I began by taking a piece of 1/2" baltic birch plywood and cutting it to be the same size at the bottom of a Systainer. Then I cut notches on it replicate the locking tabs on the bottom of the Systainer. This let me place the plywood on the top of the dust extractor and lock it on. Then I took a 5 gallon bucket and bolted it to the center of the plywood with three (3) short bolts and fender washers. This combination of plywood and bucket would serve as the base & cradle for the Dust Deputy while still allowing the Dust Deputy to be removed and emptied.

By notching the plywood, I was able to lock it to the CT Dust Extractor.

I then mounted the Dust Deputy to a 5 gallon bucket lid and set that lid on a new 5 gallon bucket (not the one bolted to the plywood). I slid the Dust Deputy and bucket into the cradle bucket and took a photo which I shared on twitter.

Done (I thought).

Then I heard back about the static, and about the static, and more about the static.

Apparently, Festool doesnt know how to properly insulate their electronics and static can fry their dust extractors brains. This was pointed out to me by many a tweeter.

Not interested in re-designing the wheel, but also not wanting to wipe out my CT Dust Extractor, I check with Oneida. While their tech support was helpful, I couldnt get a simple "yes that will work" or "no that doesnt work" answer out of them. They kept returning to 3rd party testing they had had done, saying that I would need to reference that.

Given their definitive non-answer I decided that even if there wasnt a real performance issue, their clearly was a real legal issue between the Dust Deputy and the CT Dust Extractor. Wanting to error on the side of caution, I broke down and bought their Dust Deputy SD (Static Discharge) with the SD hose and elbow.

Once the SD arrived, I took the original Dust Deputy off the lid of the 5 gallon pail and installed the SD. I added a donut of plywood under the lid to act as a stiffener and prevent the attachment bolts from tearing through the plastic.

A little plywood goes a long way in attaching the Dust Deputy to the lid.

While the journey to my working Dust Deputy was longer and more expensive than I could have imagined, Im quite satisfied with the final results. the Dust Deputy does a superb job and my CT is now filling the role of Dust Extractor and general purpose shop vac.

The sucking finale.

Deputizing the Dust Deputy