So the first thing I discovered is Yes, you absolutely do need a vacuum. So I ran down to Harbor Freight and bought a cheap dust collector and then I attached it. I found that the dust collector does not have enough suction. So I tried my shop vac and it worked. I didn’t want to commit my shop vacuum so I looked online and found that Shop Vac makes a unit that sits on a 5-gallon bucket. The motor is the same as my big shop vac. It has a paper and filter system that looks even better than what is on my shop vac. You can find it for about $40 on Amazon by searching for “Wet / Dry Vacuum Head Power Lid Kit”.

I also found a particle separator that mounts on a 5-gallon bucket. This was also on Amazon under the name of “Woodstock W2049 Mini 2-Stage Cyclone Separator” or “Big Horn 11142 Cyclone Separator, 5 Gallon” for about $18. This traps all of the larger wood pieces in one bucket and leaves the finer sawdust for the other. I’m not sure if it buys me much as the real issue is the smaller particles clogging up the main vacuum filter. But I guess if I carved a lot then it would pay off.

So here are some pictures showing how I snaked the host along the outside of my wire trough. This seems to work good but it is a little bulky.