Rousseau 5000 Dust Collection Hood

            The Rousseau 5000 Dust Collection Hood is one of the most innovative tools we have seen to date. If you’re like me the one thing I hate most about modern woodworking is dust. Not only is dust a mess, it is a health hazard for your lungs and some dust could be a carcinogen. One of the biggest culprits in the dust world is saws because they produce fine dust that becomes airborne very quickly.

            Our friends at Rousseau have developed a great little pop up tent that attaches to most saws without tools, and the hood comes in a handy and compact carrying case for use outside the shop. The 5000 has been on both of our shop chop saws, the Delta 10 inch saw and also on the new DeWalt 12 inch Sliding CMS. To test the hood we left the bag provided by the manufacturer on the saws that are supposed to collect the dust. What we found was shocking as we observed there was a lot of dust that was not trapped by the bag originating from all over the saw, which was trapped in the 5000. This means if you use a bag only, your still going to produce a load of non-contained dust.

            We hooked the 5000 to the central dust collection system in the shop via a 4 inch port found in the bottom of the 5000 and then removed the bag and went to work. We had a large job with many cuts to make and we went at it for a couple of hours, cutting boards of hard wood to the desired rough length. The 5000 captured 100 percent of the dust leaving the shop floor and the saw as clean as could be.

            When we removed the saw from its fixed station. The 5000 just pops off the saw and into the carrying bag to pack it off to the job site for cutting inside your home or your client’s. Dust collection like this can make or break you. We attached the saw to the portable stand and it was a joy to just pop the 5000 on again with no tools. We then hooked the dust port up to our big shop vacuum and it did a great job of collecting the dust and keeping it off our customers floors and furniture.

            The 5000 is made of steel and what looks like a thick nylon fabric. It has been keeping the dust down in the shop for several months and has never failed to perform the way our friends at Rousseau said it would. Is this necessary? Well, the one thing our tests showed is only a small percentage of the dust goes through the port, so hooking the dust collection directly to the port with a hose will not capture as much dust as the hood will, so yes it is a necessity. Like you, I want to live to old age and I don’t want to die from lung cancer or COPD. So the conclusion is that the Rousseau 5000 is the front line defense against dust at the miter saw. I am very pleased to recommend this quality tool from Rousseau.

            I encourage you to be proactive against dust in the shop. And this is just one of the things you can do to make your shop a healthy place to work.