I am just about ready to sand the keel, as we know the responsible (and usually required) thing to do is to hook your sanding up to a shop vac with a filter.

Sounds like a simple setup, it really does, but there is a reason this post is titled Square Port, Round Hose. You see my sander has a square port, well a rectangular port really but that doesn’t sound as good, and my shop vac has of course a round hose.

So how do you make a round hose connect to a square port? A pop bottle of course. Not a 2L pop bottle, a small 750ml pop bottle. Of course, I didn’t take photos because I was “in the moment” which is code for I didn’t think of it until I was done.

It was really quite simple. I used a pair of scissors to cut the top and bottom off the bottle. I tried to cut the top as close to just fitting on the shop vac hose as possible. Since the bottle was a Coke, I used the narrow part of the curve in the bottle as the spot where the sander would be attached. With the bottle cut and of course previously washed I started with the end that would attach to the sander. I placed the bottle over the opening and using a heat gun on the low setting I began to heat and shrink the bottle. Making sure to keep the shrinking even I worked around the bottle and eventually I achieved a nice fit. Next, I placed the shop vac hose in the top end of the bottle and used the heat gun to shrink the bottle.

The results turned out better than I expected. The sander connection is good but needed some duct tape to hold the bottle adaptor in place. The shop vac end of the bottle is so good it almost clicks when connected. I suspect I will eventually need some tape to hold it in place before the keel sanding is done, but for $0 I can’t complain.

Here are some pictures of the finished product.

To find out how this amazing and incredible adaptor worked check out Part two