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I always feel cheezy posting something that I can't give direct credit for but here goes.
I looked at a lot of different homemade cyclones and as typical with me I engineered to stock. I went to Home Depot and stood there looking at the ducting available and decided for reasons that were apparent at the time that I'd go with 8" single wall pipe. Forgive me if I get the lingo wrong as I'm not a certified sheet metal man.
The 8" pipe was flat, not in pipe form. I think the length was 24" It did have the rolled over edges for the lock seam, but I was not going to need them because I needed to make the pipe taper from 8" to 4" so I trimmed them off. I got an 8" pipe cap and that is the top. A 4" coupler is the bottom. I rolled up the pipe and put it inside the cap taped the 8" pipe cap on it to hold it with masking tape. With a long welding vice grip c clamp I held the 4" coupler to the edge of the table and what was going to be the bottom of the cyclone skin. It helped to clamp it because it's like wrestling a greased pig with razor blades because of the trimmed sheet metal.
I used a progressive cut and mark strategy of holding the formed taper and marking then use a straight edge make the straight lines. Then trimmed and worked my way down till I had a nice 1" overlap. It should be noted that my cyclone swirls counterclockwise as seen from the top so that side of the skin is on the inside. This presents a smoother way than the other way that would expose an edge to the swirl and cause less buildup of dust.
After getting everything trimmed up(top and bottom because the taper causes misalignment) I pop riveted the body together. Then sealed the whole thing with the real metal duct tape. Next was the inlet pipe. All of it is 2" pvc. I had a couple of feet of it lying around and I also already had a 2" hole saw. Put one hole in the side 3" from the top(this would be the inlet) and one in the middle of the cap(the outlet or vac side).
As you can see from the pic the inlet cutout is kind of a tear drop shape. I did it with aircraft snips and half round file. Keep trimming until you get a nice fit. The object is to get it as close to side as possible to get that stuff going in the right direction right off.
Next I cut the straight pvc for the vac side pipe that goes down inside the middle of the cyclone. You don't want to be too short and if too long it also starts sucking up debris so I made mine 14" with the the 2" elbow glued onto it before the assembly on to the cap. The wonderful thing I found is only 2" elbows because of the lip inside will fit the common hose ends of shop vacs. Everything else is your usual plumbing nightmare.
I used a 5 gal plastic bucket because they are easy to find and remember it has to seal or you lose suction. Took the lid and cut a hole big enough for the 4" duct coupler and took some scrap plywood and made about a 9" round piece with the 4" hole in the middle. This is my mount for the cyclone to stiffen the top of the bucket. Put caulk on the plywood mount and used short deck screws under the lid to mount the stiffener to the lid.
Now all three pieces, the inlet, outlet and cyclone base are all ready to be glued. I used 5min epoxy. The outlet is pretty easy, just lake sure it's hanging straight down on the inside. The inlet is tricky and I glued it and held it until the epoxy set. I also glued the duct coupler/cyclone to the stiffener/lid, hold that straight until set. I really gooped it on the make sure each joint was sealed.
I hope that makes sense and hopefully the pics will fill in the rest.
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It may be a moisture/temp thing inside the bucket that makes it so messy.
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