When you work with wood, you're almost inevitably going to spend a lot of time sanding. Whether you use a disc, belt, palm or delta sander it's going to produce a lot of fine dust. Dust that will clog up your power tools and your lungs unless you take precautions.

So I built a sanding station with a perforated downdraft top surrounded by three knockdown panels. A simple but effective design that was easy to build. But it was a hassle to setup for every little sanding job so it did not see a lot of use in practice.

I cleared up some more junk and clutter from my shed and this created enough room to add another workbench. And this bench will feature an integrated sanding station. I've salvaged enough "construction grade" wood from dumpsters so it will only cost me a couple of dimes for the screws & glue. UPDATE: I've purchased (!) a 90 degree corner for 32mm PVC pipe to neatly fit a vacuum hose to the dust chamber. That added a whopping 45 cents to the BOM. Still well below 1 (one) euro though...

The basic design of the bench is simple: a 120 by 60 cm frame supported by four 95 cm legs. A secondary frame is mounted about halfway up the legs to add extra support and create some shelving space. The worktop is made of 16 mm plywood. I've drilled a lot of holes in the central section between the two crossbeams so any sanding dust will be sucked up by the vacuum chamber underneath.

This chamber was created by screwing & glueing a piece of OSB to the underside of the crossbeams. I drilled a 32 mm hole in the OSB for the PVC pipe corner and fastened it with a small screw and lots of silicone kit. On the other side I glued a short piece of hose that will connect with my vacuum cleaner.

I also put a thin sheet of MDF at an angle inside the chamber and kitted it in place. This baffle will reduce the amount of air that needs to be displaced to create suction.