Shop Vacuum Better Big End for 1-1/4" Hose

thingiverse

The normal heavy duty shop vacuum 1-1/4" hose big-end fitting that mates with the vacuum body usually inserts into the ID of the vacuum hose and locks in place on the inside of one of the vacuum hose ribs. For most things like sawdust and fine dirt, this is fine, but if you're sucking up larger particles or awkward-shaped stuff (in my case it's most often been clumps of dried grass or small gravel), even if it passes through the smaller tool end of the hose, sometimes, as it goes flying down the hose, it'll still get hung up on the inside of the hose, stuck against that interior lip of the vacuum body adapter. Well, no more! I got frustrated with constantly having to pull the hose and clear the blockages, and just designed a better big end for my hose. It mates with the OUTSIDE diameter of the hose, leaving the inside completely clear, and locks into three consecutive ribs. It should work with most major brands of 1-1/4" plastic hose. Anything that can pass through the tool end now has an unobstructed path all the way through to the collection bin, with no neck-downs of any kind. Now the time I spend trying to get stuff into the vacuum isn't wasted trying to get it back out! There are a couple of caveats. The standard design makes the root of the hose a pretty sturdy handle to grab if you want to pull the hose out of the vacuum, which my design doesn't. If you pull on the hose, you're more likely to pull the hose out of the big end than the big end out of the vacuum. That's what the grab lip around the top of the part is for: to give you something to grab onto. And yes, I DID get the first smooth-bodied prototype stuck in the vacuum once before I added that. It's a little bit annoying to get attached, but not much worse than pulling the old big-end fitting out; it just takes sticking a screwdriver or something in between the hose and the barbs to guide the hose ribs over them until it's in far enough to lock in place.