I have a love-hate relationship with my Shop Vac.  It is fantastic at collecting dust for stuff like sanders, biscuit jointer, Kreg jig, circular saw and cleaning up the floor.  The only down side is the noise, it is loud and the tone is very unpleasant.  So I set out to make a Shop Vac Silencing Cabinet that will also house the dust deputy and bucket.

Here is a picture of the finished product

Design

When first laying out the cabinet, I noticed that my dust deputy on top of a standard 5 gallon bucket was going to make my cabinet really tall, so I found  a little 3.5 gallon replacement from Amazon.  It is only 11 inches tall which works well in the space.  One other thing I wanted to incorporate was something to allow airflow into and out of the cabinet, without making a big hole that allowed sound out.  So there is an upper and lower cavity that allows some air to circulate.

The shopping List

• Casters

  • COOCHEER 3” PVC Heavy Duty Swivel Caster Wheels 360 Degree Top Plate with Brake Pack of 4 – Black (880Lbs)

• 1 1/2 Sheets of 3/4″ Birch Plywood
• 1 1/2 sheets of 1/2″ Birch plywood (I used some leftover stuff)
• Hardwood for edging and door frame(I had some birch)
• 2X Sound absorption panels

  • 12 Pack- Acoustic Panels Studio Foam Wedges 1″ X 12″ X 12″

• 3.5 Gallon Bucket

  • Meguiar’s Yellow Bucket, 3.5 gallon capacity

• 30″ Continuous Hinge from Home Depot
• 2X Magnetic Latches from Home Depot
• Spray Adhesive (Ultimate 77 or something like that)

Making the Cabinet

Like most of my cabinets in the shop, they are constructed with Purebond  3/4″ plywood, 1/2″ plywood backs with dado and rabbet construction.

I cut some 1/2″‘ ply strips to use for the air circulation channels.  In the picture below, two channels of air enter the right side in the middle.  Each path makes 3 passes and will enter the bottom of the vac section towards the inboard side in the front and rear

The air enters through ovals I cut with a forstner bit and chisels

The glue up was pretty complicated with the center divider and the air circulation panels.  I think it took  2-3 dry runs before I had it down.

During my frantic glue up I flipped the upper partition around and my “air entry” holes are on the wrong side of the cabinet.  They should be on the right side.  Air will still move it will just have one less pass.

After the cabinet came out of the clamps, I glued in the back.  Since I was using left over pieces, the back is comprised of four pieces.  Not as pretty, but functional.

Face Frame

As the back was glued and clamped into place, I started to work on the face frame.  I still had a handful of birch boards left over from my workbench, but they were really bowed/twisted/cupped.  As a side note, the upper and lower pieces of the face frame have to be tall enough to cover the air circulation chambers as well.

It took quite a bit of work to get them flattened at the jointer.  I probably started with stock a little less than 5/4 and ended up with 3/4 material.  After jointing and planing, they rested, and so did I.

The next step was to cut everything to width and length.  I ripped all the horizontal pieces to ~3 wide and the vertical pieces to ~1 3/4″ wide.  When making rip cuts, some burn is expected, so I leave them a little proud of my final dimension and use my planer to remove the burn/saw marks.  It is also very accurate.

Then I laid them onto the cabinet to lay out my cut lines.  I typically would have a continuous pieces running side-to-side on the cabinet, but my rough stock wouldn’t allow that long of a piece.

Since I will be using dowels to hold the face frame together, I need to add four dowel holes (2 on the right and left side of the middle stretcher). I had to plan my dowel holes ahead of time. I utilized 5/16″ dowels and a jig that I bought from Amazon a while back, which works great.

I was pretty nervous that I couldn’t align 16 dowel holes up, but it went together nicely.  Here it is clamped up, just under 4′ wide.

I cleaned up some of the joints with a block plane.  I realized that I didn’t need to since I will use a flush trim bit later on.  Oh well.

Attaching Face Frame

When attaching the face frame to the cabinet, I drive a small finishing nail into one corner and cut the head off.  This stops the face frame from sliding around when adding the clamps.

I had to add some cauls (cawls?) to get clamp pressure in the center where a clamp couldn’t reach

After the glue dried, I used a flush trim bit on a router to flush up the face frame.  I purchased a router dust collection kit from Oneida and this was the first time I used it.  It works pretty good, check it out here

I sanded the entire cabinet at this time with 80 and 150 grit.

Door Construction

Here is the rough stock for the door frames.  Its pretty nasty stuff, but has some nice figure.  I plan on putting doors on the vacuum side and the dust deputy side.  If you noticed from my “finished” picture I didn’t have one on the dust deputy side.  My “assistant” screwed up and cut a couple pieces 1″ short.  By assistant, I mean me.

The construction is very similar to the face frame.  Mill, Cut to width and length, dowel it together.  The only difference is that I cut a rabbet in the back side to accept the plywood panel.  Since I am trying to use up some left over material, I used 3/4″ plywood panels.

Here is a shot of the rabbet for the panel.  I made them on my router table.  The horizontal pieces have them all the way through and the vertical pieces have them stopped before the ends.

Panels glued in and a shot of my new Delve Square from Woodpeckers.  The door style matches the face frame.

Hinge Attachment

I debated on hinge type for a while, but with the weight of the door I went with a tried and true continuous (piano) hinge.  In order to get the door to lay flat on face frame, I need to mortise the hinge into the door.  I wish I would have figure out the hinge type earlier.  I would have made the door wider so when it opened it would clear the corner of the cabinet.  It only opens about 110 degrees or so and  then hits the cabinet.

I set up my router table using the height of the hinge, but forgot about the 3/4 plywood panel sticking proud of the door frame.  I ended up just sneaking up on the depth.

I squared the corners with a chisel and attached the hinge.  In order to align the door and hinge properly, I used some double stick tape and some layout lines on the face frame.  Once the door was where I liked it, I applied pressure to the hinge side of the door.  Then I could slowly open it.  This method worked on the third try.

To attach the hinge to the face frame, I started in the center and drilled/drove one screw.  Then I shut door again and made sure it was still on my alignment marks.  Opened it back up and drilled/drove another screw.  Check it again and then finish up with a few more drill/drive combos.  I drilled out all the holes needed and then removed the hinge from the cabinet and door for finishing.

It was about this time that I screwed up my cuts for the left hand door over the dust deputy.  I am going to wait until another day.

Finishing

I sanded the door frame with 80 and 150 grit and moved onto applying shellac.  After sanding, I applied a coat of shellac, let it dry for an hours or so, and sanded with 220 grit.  I did this one more time and applied one last coat of shellac.

The handle pull for the door.  I love using a block plane.

After adding the finish, I placed the components in the cabinet.  I located where the 2 1/2″ holes would be drilled.  A 2 1/2″ hole saw was a great fit (mine is from Milwaukee) for the hose.  After drilling the holes, I added the sound panels.

I bought a second set of panels for the door since I ran out.  Even without the sound panels on the door it works really well.  I use two magnetic catches to hold the door closed.