Does This Happen To More Woodworkers Than Me?

One of my problems is I have as many "shop" projects I would like to do as all kinds of regular (what ever that means) projects I want to do. Sometimes I start on a project and once I get going I get to some phase that I'm doing and think, oh, this would be so much easier and or faster if I had only built this jig/fixture or modified one of my tool stations. The next thing you know I'm side tracked working on my shop instead of my project.

In fact that very thing happened to me when I was building the Valet (you know that thing I throw all the junk that was in my pockets at night before I toss my dirty clothes in the laundry).

I was working on my router table cutting dadoes of different sizes and putting profiles on some edges. At the time I had one big open space under my router table. All my wrenches, bits and other accessories were all just tossed in that space. Besides nothing being organized (read all mixed up just tossed in from the last time I used what ever it was) everything was covered in wood dust and chips from every time the table gets used.

I got so frustrated that I stopped working on my project and started designing, then constructing partitions and sliding drawers for my 1/2" shank bits, my 1/4" shank bits, a shallow drawer for marking utensils, shelves for storage for my hold downs and other misc. accessories for my Jointech fence. I spent a week of working on that and put my project on hold for that.

A couple of days later I started to work on my valet again only to get frustrated with the dust collection I was using on my router table. I use a Dewalt 621 router in my table that has built in dust collection port. Unfortunately it has a small connection, built for a 1 and 1/2" hose for a shop vac.

Now to make a short story long, I have a Penn State 1 and 1/2 hp dust collector with a 4" hose, but it puts too much strain on my dust collector to limit it to such a small diameter hose. So I take my 16 gallon Shop vac and change out the hose for a 1 and 1/2" hose and hook that up. That presents me with 2 issues. 1) I have to remember to hook that up to my router and turn it on before I rout something and 2) that's still built for a 2 and 1/2" hose and it puts a strain on the motor to run such a small diameter hose.

I get a "brain storm" and decide what I really need is to go out and procure a 5 gallon shop vac that I can dedicate to my router table, pick up one of those switches they sell at Rocklers (you know the kind that look like the ones that come on like a Jet contractor's table saw), cut the female end off and but a dual outlet receptacle box mounted on to my router table. Then all I have to do is plug the male end into a power outlet and then plug my router and newly acquired shop vac. Bam, now when I turn on my router (via that new power switch) my small shop vac turns on in unison.

Now in case anybody forgot, my initial objective was to build the valet I saw in Wood Magazine. Now granted my extra time that I have in the shop is semi limited due to the fact I'm always trying to keep up with my teenage kids and their demands. But what started out as a project that I was going to take approx. a week or so to build turned into about 3 weeks of so.

Joe Cumbo Buffalo, NY joecumbo@yahoo.com