The ultimate DIY workbench shop vac

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01]Hey YouTube, Woodworker Anonymous here in my garage workshop. And today I'm going to show you what I consider to be my greatest addition to my workshop, which is an integrated two-stage shop vac built directly into my workbench. Uh I added this shop vac to the workbench maybe six, seven years ago. And the thing is, it became so used, it was doing instantly like five different jobs all the time. You know, I'd be hooking it up for a general cleanup, of course, but you know, a random orbit sander, you're doing all your sanding at the workbench, uh any routing you did, ever use a circular saw or even my track saw, that thing, it was constantly being emptied. It had to be emptied. The filters had to be cleaned. became a complete nuisance. So, I had to fix that. So, the answer was to create some kind of a two-stage shop vac in the workbench. And that's what I did. Now, I I did some research and I found a theme baffle. There's a website for theme baffles. They explain exactly how they work. Matias Wandelle built a theme baffle similar to what I'm doing here.

[00:01:19]I've made two modifications to the theme baffle as described on the website uh and the way that Matias built his. And frankly, I think that my design alterations have made my theme baffle even more efficient. I'm going to show you how I did that and explain why I did it.

[00:01:43]All right. So, I I've done a couple unconventional things here on the theme baffle, and I'll just show them to you real quick. If you go to the theme website, they actually have a website and a forum about building these things.

[00:01:56]They uh suggest making this slot here that goes around the perimeter that allows the uh the debris to fall down into the catch pacing. They they suggest making the slot uh only 240 degrees of the circumference and having 120 degrees of the conference circumference um closed off. And I think the theory behind that is that it'll create more of a separation if you will between the uh I guess the air space in the baffle and the air space down below in the catch basin. And a reason they they want that is because this is you know creating a cyclone up top. And they really think that um you know not having that same cyclone contain uh you know continue down below the baffle um will help prevent any blowback or or any more dust being sucked back up into the u the baffle and then possibly you know into the actual um filter. Um obviously I didn't do that and uh one of the reasons is uh you can see the shape of uh of what is going to be the catch basin below. It's it's square and it's actually wider and I think you know a lot of these themed baffles they they you know the catch basin is also very similar in size and shape to the baffle that sits on top of it. Uh that's not the case here. This is going to be a square box underneath this thing.

[00:03:29]And it's also going to have a wider uh perimeter than the actual baffle itself. So as the the dust comes in, it's going to like move towards the outsides. It's going to hit the corners as it tries to rotate. I I think that the shape, the square shape of the receptacle container below it along with the extra width um uh will help mitigate any tendency uh for the dust that's once it's down here to get back up into this area. Not to mention the fact that because this uh the lip of a bucket actually extends below this this surface, you know, anything that's like maybe circulating up near the top will hit that lip and won't be, you know, tempted to be sucked back up into it.

[00:04:15]All right, so that's that's one thing.

[00:04:17]The other thing that's different here is most people though they use like some type of cylinder or even like a a plexiglass that they've like round, you know, bent into like a perfectly cylindrical shape. Um, buckets aren't cylindrical. They are conicle. They do have a smaller diameter at the bottom than they do at the top. Um, and I saw Matias when he built his, he used it in this fashion where like the the larger diameter was at the top of the baffle.

[00:04:46]Um, and when you look at this, I mean, there's a major difference here between this theme baffle and the dust deputy.

[00:04:55]The dust deputy is trying to force everything down into the center hole.

[00:05:01]The theme baffle is trying to force everything down into the outside perimeter.

[00:05:06]So, it doesn't make sense to do it in this fashion. It would make more sense to do this. It seems to me like it's working with you this way. Um, seems to me like that's working against you when you're trying to force stuff down. Um, you're not trying to force it to the middle. So, do it that way.

[00:05:33]Okay. So, you can see how the setup works underneath the bench. Uh, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to pull these two things out. I'm going to pull out the catch basin and the theme baffle. Uh and uh we'll take a look inside. As you can see already, uh the way this is filling up, the corners are catching more dust. And that's because of because of the square shape of this, it does a good job, I believe, of separating the uh cyclonic activity up here from the space down here. Even though I don't have a typical baffle in it, I did my own baffle. It's a little different. Okay, I just pulled this unit out from underneath the bench and then the whole thing just slides in to that little ramp area or, you know, shelf area that I built underneath. So, it just slides in there and then this lines up with this hole that pops through here.

[00:06:25]This is the actual port that I can attach various different hoses to. This goes through this hole.

[00:06:34]goes into this flexible thing here. And then I can tighten it down with this little uh rockler clamp that was made for this type of hose. I I just pulled this out. I haven't even turned it upside down. But so you can see here is the weather stripping that creates a perfect suction when I turn the machine on.

[00:06:58]This is the baffle that I made.

[00:07:01]uh well the disc that creates like the separation between the baffle and the catch basin. Uh and you can see how this lip is actually preventing dust from maybe slipping back up in into the uh the suction inside that. Now this is just pressure fitted on here. I can pull it off and you can see got a little bit dust build up here.

[00:07:30]We'll clean all this off before I put it back. But, uh, this plugs into that. And here is the opening. It's a little slotted cut into that pipe. And that's where the shop back pulls everything into. So, you know, you have the entrance from the pipe here. Everything starts circling like this. I figured it slows down on this side because it's closest to the furthest away from where it enters. And that kind of matches up here. It slows down and you can see most of the debris is starting to fall on this side.

[00:08:10]Um, but again, no sawdust really, no chips or anything like that getting through. Only thing gets through is the super fines and even most of those don't get through as well. So, this this system seems to be working extremely well.

[00:08:28]So, like I was saying, I haven't emptied this in a couple months, and I just pulled this out uh of the the bottom of my workbench. So, we're going to take a look and see how much debris we find in here.

[00:08:43]And there you can see it's simply very, very fine dust particles. literally no sawdust so to speak of. So that's what this filter is for. This filter will catch that fine dust. But this system is just so efficient.

[00:09:04]Okay, in closing, I just want to make a couple more points here. Uh number one, the theme baffle that I have installed down here is far more capable than uh a typical dust deputy which I have been using also uh for some of my stationary tools. Uh this cannot handle a huge volume of dust. it can get overwhelmed if you're sucking up a really heavy pile of sawdust with your your vacuum uh that you'll get so much debris in there it won't have time to drop down and it'll end up getting sucked up into the shop vac and actually when you can see how that's already happened here. Um I haven't been able to overwhelm this baffle. It's even it it can handle huge piles on the floor no problem. never get anything as far as like chips or anything like saw heavy sawdust in that little unit. Uh so much more efficient, handles more volume. The whole reason that this was done was because that capacity is so small. You know, having the shop vac in the in the workbench like this is super convenient.

[00:10:17]using it all the time, but having that little shop vac in there, it was getting clogged and filled up almost immediately. This thing claims to have 5 and 1/2 gallons.

[00:10:30]No, 5 gallons. Claims to have 5 gall of capacity. And I imagine if you poured water into this thing, you'd probably get five gallons. But the fact of the matter is once you dump this motor in there with this thing and then put a bag on here that can basically only fit around the front of it before it all gets jammed up. The volume the real volume in this thing using any kind of a bag is like a gallon max. And if you're not using a bag, that filter is going to clog up so fast. You probably won't get any more than a gallon that way either before you need to open it up, empty it out, and clean that filter. Uh, this container, and I just measured it, uh, it's 16 by 13 and 1/4 by 16, and I did the math. Cubic cubic inches to gallons, it's like 12 and a/4 gallons.

[00:11:27]12 gallons here, one gallon here. The difference is m it's just massive. And uh the fact that it's cleaning, you only have to clean out that filter once every couple months. This is just a major win.

[00:11:42]And the last thing I want to point out is obviously your workbench doesn't look anything like my workbench.

[00:11:51]And I documented building this thing. I have a lot of video of putting this whole thing together, but it's pointless to put that on YouTube. It takes up a ton of time and it's not going to be applicable to your situation. You know, this whole thing was built off the cuff.

[00:12:09]There were no plans. Measuring, cutting, and putting it together in a trial and error process definitely not going to work for your situation. But if you have any kind of like aptitude for building stuff, you can definitely get this done.

[00:12:23]There's nothing complicated here really.

[00:12:24]You got to figure that out on your own.

[00:12:27]It's a fun build. It's a fun process and it's a huge upgrade at the workbench for so many different things.

[00:12:35]So, as usual, get out in the shop, guys.

[00:12:38]Make something great and I'll catch you next time.