# so far so good?



## woodshaver (Mar 21, 2009)

The never ending battle with sawdust. My Triton came with a hose attachment on the base and it work ok; it collects almost all the dust/chips and it's well made not flimsy at all. I hope your new attachment works out ok for you
Pottz.


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## doubleDD (Oct 21, 2012)

Before I mounted my router to a table with a collection box and freehand was most of my work, this would of been a great help. It was dust and chips everywhere. This looks to be a good solution. Thanks for the review, may have to get one anyway. There are still times when this will be useful.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

tony-ive been eyeballing the triton tools for awhile now just wasn't sure of the quality,may have to look at those some more buddy.
dave-yeah I do most of my routing on my table also but there are still times when a hand held is the only way.i gotta say this shield worked great but my concern is with the durability of the plastic,only time will tell.


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

Triton tools were originally a good Australian made product, no probs with any quality there mate.
However along came GMC Global Machine Company and bought Triton GMC was later remamed JMC Junk Machine Company due to their products being rubbish and went under as a result, along with sinking it dragged Triton along for the ride,... some where in the Atlantic from memory. So it appears somebody has refloated the Triton Company, and I hope its as good as it used to be.

The founder of Triton took the loot and ran, (smart man) now residing in an asian country enjoying life to the fullest

I will go do some research on Triton and report back with an update soon.


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

I found this on Stu Lees site STUSHED
Mr Triton
Posted on September 26, 2015 by Stuart
George Lewin, the '99 - '15 years

Greetings fellow Triton-lovers (and anyone else who happens to read this)

This is being written from Phuket Island, on the south-west coast of Thailand, where I've been living for almost two years.

Stuart kindly invited me to write a sort of blog to bring you up to date on what's happened in my life in the sixteen years (Cripes! Is it that long????) since I sold Triton. So here goes….

Up until the mid-90's, the thought of selling Triton had never entered my mind. Triton had been my life's work, my magnum opus.

It had been nurtured from an idea that took root in my head one fine day when I was a 25 year-old TV journalist for ABC-TV News, struggling build a dining table. With incredible twists and turns and with the help of some wonderful people, that idea grew into a multi-award winning business that ended up employing hundreds of people, and which sold about $300 million worth of products around the world over the ensuing 25 years.

A common utterance was that selling Triton would be like cutting off my right arm. It was my "baby" and arguably my obsession, and I loved it. People used to call me Mr. Triton. They said I was married to the company, and shared my bed with a saw bench. (Not true.)

However on flying back to Oz in early 1995 after marathon negotiations over the previous 18 months with Black & Decker (Europe), a pensive mood kicked in.

In London, we had just signed the Heads of Agreement of a huge deal. B&D wanted to take Triton Superjaws as an Elu product, and they also wanted the Workcentre range to market throughout Europe.

Elu was considered the "Rolls-Royce" of power tools at the time, and B&D wanted to lift their brand image in Europe, so had bought them out. (Shades of GMC/Triton, but more on that later.)

This was the biggest deal I was ever likely to make…$35m worth of product to be supplied over the first five years of the contracts, possible global manufacture under license after five years, and all with the imprimatur of one of the world's best power tool brands.

So why wasn't I jumping out of my skin with excitement? The answer soon dawned on me. There was not much to aspire to any more. The monicker people had given me - Mr. Triton - had become my reality and George Lewin had sort of disappeared through the cracks. Fame and fortune tasted fine, but they still didn't fill the void inside.

(True Confessions time. Despite several fine relationships over the years, I've always yearned to meet the real Love of my Life…the sort of woman who can give her total love and receive mine…truly, madly and deeply. And, so the fantasy goes. When we finally meet we'l both know it. Neither of us will blow it, and we'll live together happily ever after. The End. Sigh.)

By the time we were landing at Tulla, the conviction had gelled that I'd invented enough machines - it was time to re-invent myself, and make room for Her.

GETTING READY TO SELL

The first step was to tackle my chronic workaholism. A wonderful mentor by the name of John Cameron, former CEO of Ajax Nettlefolds, offered to help me re-structure some of the systems and the the key managerial roles in Triton, which at that stage directly employed about 120 people, plus many part-timers such as in-store demonstrators, sales agents and merchandisers.

There were six line managers, all very good hand-picked people, but I had largely been disempowering them - unconsciously and unwittingly - with my 'uber-hands-on' style. No-one ever did a final draft or version of anything, knowing the boss would pick it to pieces trying to improve it.

With John's help, the managers started becoming much more independent and effective, and I was able to start extricating myself from the day-to-day running of the business. All departments heard less and less from me, apart from R&D which was always my first love.

Hating Melbourne's winters, it was time to plan a geographic move…and it had to be far enough away from the factories so that there wouldn't be a temptation to ride in on my white charger at every sign of trouble - as had been the case for so long.

Bought a lovely house at Montecollum, near Byron Bay in northern New South Wales in 1995, and started creating a new life for myself. Having been so intimately involved in every detail of the business for so long, the transition was best done gradually, both for my sake and for the company.

It took all of five years to complete that process, commuting between Tulla and the Gold Coast every couple of weeks initially and gradually increasing the frequency and duration of my trips north.

By the late 90's, my managers were managing beautifully, ambitious targets were being met, the Series 2000 Workcentre had been bedded down and was selling well, and our first few container-loads of power saws and routers had arrived from Taiwan. They were being snapped up in the stores, and getting rave reviews from delighted customers.

We were heading for our first $20m sales year, and I was finally emotionally and professionally ready to sell.

SELLING UP

The decision to actually put Triton on the market was prompted by an approach from (you won't believe this) GMC, the humbly named Global Machinery Corporation. But after a couple of meeting with the two principals, who offered me ludicrously large amounts of money, I concluded that my "baby" was not for sale to them.

In my view, their values sucked. They were just box movers, with no passion for woodwork, just for money. They wanted to improve their brand image by buying a much-loved and respected brand. Nope! Not for sale to GMC, at any price.

But their approach prompted me to search out a business broker, and he got to work on a short-list of possible candidates. Hills Industries from South Australia - who had supplied Triton with millions of dollars worth of steel tubing over the previous 15 years - were up near the top of the list.

The broker went to Adelaide and started doing his elaborate routine of describing the company to them in very broad terms, without naming it, to see if they were interested in signing non-disclosure agreements to find out more. They asked "It's not Triton, is it?" As it turned out, Hills were on a pretty ambitious expansion-by-acquisition program, and fortuitously, Triton was up near the top of their list!

Before long, I'd had meetings with all their top executives, and the fit seemed good. Both were successful Aussie companies, both were founded on backyard innovations, both had similar technological capabilities, we espoused similar values, and most of all, Hills at the time had an MD who read me like a book.

David Simmonds said at our second or third meeting. "George, I think I know what's troubling you about this prospective sale. Let me assure you that Hills have acquired 26 companies over the last few decades. Some were dogs, and still are. Others were dogs and we've turned them around. Others were good companies and we brought them down. Some were good, and now are even better. What we've learnt from all of this is that 'If it ain't broke, you don't fix it.'"

"I can assure you, that if this sale goes ahead, we won't turn up on a Monday morning and start firing your people and telling you how to run the company. We'll take our size 14 boots off at the door, and respectfully ask you to show us how you do things so well."

I could have kissed him. (Erk!) But he had nailed the main issue that was troubling me. After a lot of tough negotiations, mostly handled expertly by my co-Director Peter Szanto (also my best friend since schooldays, my life-long lawyer and minority Triton shareholder) we finally signed about a thousand documents in September 1999, and our baby was sold - lock, stock and barrel.

To help keep them honest, the contract of sale prevented Hills from firing any of the staff for at least 12 months, and committed them to long-term leases on the two factories in Moorabbin and Cheltenham.

While it was important to retain 'the team' - who were sort of like my family - and to keep the manufacturing in Australia, I didn't want to retain any share ownership of the business - knowing that we would probably disagree on almost everything. I also didn't want a general consultancy role, but agreed to an ongoing role in R&D, which was never really taken up.

Sadly, despite Hills' many efforts, the business went downhill pretty much from the time they bought it, and an ex-employee told me that only about 70 of the former excellent staff were left after about two years. The best ones were probably the first to leave.

And my baby was hardly thriving…in fact, it had started losing money and market share, a process that continued until Hills finally decided to offload it to GMC around 2007, who were still trying to improve their reputation by buying Triton. Sheesh!

The direction Triton was heading after the sale was deeply troubling, but I was too busy with the Triton Foundation to pay all that much attention.


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## BenDupre (Jan 23, 2017)

What do you think of the Rockler dust right small attacment hose? Mine keeps falling off of everything because the hose is too heavy.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

thank you rob for the research on triton,what do you think tony,whats your love or hate so far?as far as the other review I did read his before I posted mine and he is correct about the plastic being a little flimsy,makes me wonder how long it will last.i see no problem with the mounting though just make sure your screws don't protrude!as I said time will tell for me.thanks buddy.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> What do you think of the Rockler dust right small attacment hose? Mine keeps falling off of everything because the hose is too heavy.
> 
> - BenDupre


well, I love it,although it does come off some times.i have an over head boom so my hose hangs down over my workbench so the problem isn't as bad.http://lumberjocks.com/projects/247354#


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## BenDupre (Jan 23, 2017)

> well, I love it,although it does come off some times.i have an over head boom so my hose hangs down over my workbench so the problem isn t as bad.http://lumberjocks.com/projects/247354#
> 
> - pottz


Looks like you have found the answer. Very nice


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> well, I love it,although it does come off some times.i have an over head boom so my hose hangs down over my workbench so the problem isn t as bad.http://lumberjocks.com/projects/247354#
> 
> - pottz
> I need to update the pics since I posted this I added an outlet on the end of the boom so I can plug in my sander or whatever right on the boom arm so the hose and cord all hang down out of the way.love it.
> ...


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## robscastle (May 13, 2012)

From my experience the hose is the major problem with dust collection.
I tried various attachments to my DIY Ryobi's which have a 20mm or thereabouts attachment built into the base.
However no matter what I tried I found it prevented the router being used the way I wanted or it caused inaccuracies as I was working away, and so as a result took them back off.
I had seen what Ben did in his original post so I will be interested to see what the update update involves.

If its not the power cord getting in the way its the flexible hose! or being limited to a particular work area.

The dust issue is part of the reason I choose to work outdoors too!


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## michelletwo (Feb 22, 2010)

I have LED shop lights..the metal shrouds are sheet metal..I put all hoses(and electric ) over them, so my hoses hang down on to my work. Works slicker than goose grease.


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## steliart (Jan 15, 2011)

dust dust dust everywhere what ever I do i cant get rid of it.
That's a good solution man


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## TimScoville (Apr 8, 2009)

I bought this too after seeing a video on it. Turned out it wasn't any help to me when I tried to used it for router planing a slab because the bit had to be lowered too much that there was no room for this to be used. It'll be fine for the edge routing like was advertised but I don't do much of it.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> I bought this too after seeing a video on it. Turned out it wasn t any help to me when I tried to used it for router planing a slab because the bit had to be lowered too much that there was no room for this to be used. It ll be fine for the edge routing like was advertised but I don t do much of it.
> 
> - Tim Scoville


yeah it's mostly good for the edges,funny thing is most of the time im in a hurry and dont take the time to put it on.i guess i need to leave on a router dedicated for that particular use.


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