Downdraft Sanding Table From Scraps

Time to start making a great use of random scraps in my workshop. For a while I've been wanting to make a portable tabletop downdraft table and now is the time. Using nothing but scraps I've had laying around (scrap wood, random caulk, and an open box of drywall screws) plus an affordable dust port, I was able to put together this masterpiece. This works nearly perfectly with one of our other builds, the Super Easy Dust Collection Cart. This way it's easy to put on a card table and do light sanding of small pieces without sitting on the floor.

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Scrap wood 1/2 to 3/4 plywood, mdf, or osb approximately 2 foot by 3 foot

1/8 scrap about 2 foot by 3 foot

Leftover Caulk

Drywall Screws

Dust Port

Tools: (for affordable options, we highly recommend the Ryobi brand from Home Depot)

Dewalt Table Saw (we recommend the DW7491RS based on discussions with travis.muszynski because of its ability to take a DADO blade, check out his stuff on his YouTube Page, How I Do Things DIY)

Ryobi Drill/Driver

Ryobi Miter Saw

Ryobi Circular Saw

Ryobi Routers

Ryobi Orbital Sander

Ryobi Combination Kits

Router and Sander

Router and Bits

Flush Trim Bit

Milwuakee Hole Bits

Countersink Drill Set

We had some 1/2 inch MDF laying around in the workshop, so we cut 5 inch strips from an 8ft board. Once those were ripped through the table saw, we cut them to size, approximately 20 inches (2) and 22 inches (2) using our miter saw.

We pre-drilled and countersunk two screws through each side of the walls and put the box walls together with the drywall screws.

I trimmed the 1/8th inch piece of plywood to fit in the box at an angle so that the sawdust will be forced down to the bottom at one side where the dust port will be connected.

Using the remainder of the 1/8th inch board we cut a piece to fit the top of the table. We added a bead of caulk to the top of the box and pre-drilled/countersunk the screws on the top. Then we wiped off the excess caulk.

We wanted to get the unit as air tight as possible so that all suction will be working on the top and not loosing suction from gaps in the sides/bottom/top. We also added a thick bead as we laid in the angled piece.

We cut the bottom a little large, ran a bead of caulk, and attached it in the same manner as the top by pre-drilling and countersinking the screws. We used our Ryobi Router and a trim bit to trim the bottom directly to size.

We used a Milwuakee Hole Saw bit to drill out the hole for the dust port. We then attached is using some random screws we had laying around after pre-drilling the hole.

We created a grid on the top of the unit (roughly an inch by an inch) and then drilled out a grid of holes with some countersinking, starting at the middle. We did a little early testing and decided to open the holes to 1/4 inch before calling it good. I ran it for a quick sample with the sawdust I had laying around from the project and it did pretty well. I determined that more downdraft holes (in any significant amount) would reduce the downward draft to a level that would be unacceptable.

We decided to do some light sanding around any sharp areas from cutting and trimming then sprayed the whole top with some leftover dark blue paint we had laying around from a project 3 or 4 years ago.

Just hook it up to your shopvac or even better, build a nice Dust Collection Cart like we did in our other instructable to help reduce the need for cleaning or buying new filters by collecting the sawdust in a bucket so it never reaches the filter. We used the Dustopper and highly recommend the setup.

Check out all of our other instructables and some awesome builds on our YouTube and Facebook pages.