I recently bought myself a Festool ETS EC 150/5 random orbital sander (ROS) as I needed something to help hide my mistakes sand my excellent quality finished pieces to bring out their true inner beauty. Either way, one of my reasons for splashing out on the green rather than a lesser brand was because of their (deserved IMHO) reputation for excellent dust collection.
The problem though is that the Festool hose only fits the Festool dust extractor. I’ll be brutally honest and say I’m never going to splurge Festool levels of money on a vacuum cleaner when I’ve got a perfectly good Henry in the shop. What this meant was I needed a hose adaptor to convert from the large Festool hose to the smaller Henry hose.
Initially I just duct taped the two hoses together which worked fine but it quickly became boring when I wanted to use the vacuum cleaner for other things so I decided to make a hose adaptor out of wood. The design of my hose adaptor is primitive but effective and works well with the way I work. The hose adaptor will almost always live on the floor and just get kicked about so it has to be robust. I’ll probably build something a bit more fancy when I get the time but for now this solution is great as it’s quick and simple.
Start by finding a scrap of timber about 150x150mm and locating the centre. Fit a 57mm hole saw into the pillar drill and drill a hole. If you don’t clamp the piece down and let it vibrate you’ll get a 58mm hole which will match the Festool hose perfectly.
Check the fit. If it’s not perfect refine it with a piece of sand paper don’t forget to use dust extraction with MDF.
Find another scrap of timber about the same size and cut one edge flat. Then cut one edge flat on the piece with a hole.
Now gang the two pieces up putting the cut face to the fence and cut them into approximately a square measuring 120x120mm. The exact size doesn’t matter, all that matters is that the two pieces are the same size when you’ve finished.
Find the centre of the piece without a hole.
Drill a 38mm hole. The hose on the Henry is 37mm so the hole is a little large but it can easily be fixed with a bit of tape around the hose. My Henry hose is cracked anyway so it has to have tape around it.
Check the fit of the Henry hose in the just drilled piece. As you can see it’s a good fit, perhaps a tiny bit loose but when under vacuum it won’t fall out.
Cut a strip of 4mm ply or other sheet timber 120mm wide. This will form the outside of the hose adaptor box.
Mark the width of one of the hole pieces on the strip of ply and cut it to length.
Drill, countersink and screw the first side to the hole pieces, if you are willing to wait glue would also work.
Mark out the width of the opposite side then cut to length. Drill, countersink and screw this side on then repeat for the final two open faces.
Sand the ply flush with the hole sides and generally soften up the edges.
Plug both hoses into the hose adaptor box and find a scrap of wood to test the sanders dust collection on.
Ah, the joy of dust free sanding.
