Just about all of us have a circular saw in our workshop, but most of us call them Skillsaws! These handy little saws have been around since before we were born. The name Skillsaw is a synonymous with circular saws as Kleenex is to tissues. We buy them, we use them, and we love them. Unfortunately, very few of these saws allow for any dust collection and the ones that do are either hard to find and/or very expensive.
That is a real shame because managing wood dust and keeping it out of your lungs is pretty important. None of us want to end up dragging an oxygen bottle around!
I found a very easy way to add a dust fitting to just about any circular saw. My Skillsaw came with a hole toward the back of the shroud around the blade where the dust shoot out. My solution was simply to epoxy a small plastic dust fitting over the hole in the shroud.
Skillsaw with dust collection
Dust Port on Circular Saw
Adding the dust fitting to my circular saw was very easy.
Dust Port on Circular Saw
I was able to substantially upgrade my circular saw for less than five dollars!
Dust fitting on Skillsaw
OK, so the obvious question is “how well does it work?”. I would be lying if I said that it was as good as a one of the high end saws like a Festool. But, a Festool will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $600. If you can afford that, or if you use your saw very frequently then by all means buy a saw with excellent dust collection. On the other hand, if you can’t justify big money for a saw that you use only once in a while then this little upgrade is a no brainer!
