Tool + accessory = a better tool

Milwaukee has added more offerings in its ever-growing category of vacuum tool accessories, with a couple of them great for woodworkers. The company’s “Air-Tip” tools have always been targeted at the trades — including non-woodworking ones like automotive and metalworking — but everybody wins when there’s crossover.   

The new rollout has five new accessories, but two of them (both priced around $35) caught my eye as potentially quite useful to woodworkers. As with earlier accessories in the lineup, these are not proprietary to Milwaukee tools, but will attach to any 1-1/4", 1-7/8" or 2-1/2" hose fitting. 

The first, shown at the left in the image above, is the Air-Tip compact dust collector. Contractors would love this for wall installations as it’s being used here. Once connected to a vacuum, it suctions onto any flat surface and will grab anything that falls above it. Great for those panel cutouts, but I’m thinking it’s also great for drilling carcases and cabinets, under jigsaws being used vertically, or even just attached horizontally to a drill press table up close to the action. 

The other is the Air-Tip debris scraper, on the right above. Again, it’s aimed at contractors and jobsite use, but I can think of all sorts of woodshop tasks that could benefit from having a vacuum-powered scraper, such as removing dried adhesive from panel glue-ups or workbench tops, or old cracking and flaking finish when restoring furniture. And if you’ve ever worked with live-edge stock, you know what a pain (and mess) it is to remove tight bark and chunks of loose wood. One of these could make that chore easier and cleaner; even more so should Milwaukee ever opt to offer some narrower scraper blades in the future. 

I get very excited when a new tool comes out, and you probably do, too. But I think it’s even more exciting when a new universal-fit accessory can make the tools I already have better.