The siphon tube in my cabinet is a bypass tube. It does not just dip into the media. Some lesser cabinets just have a dip-tube. When I get to the shop, I will try to take a picture of it, but it is basically as such: The media hose is connected to the siphon tube at the front-right (your cabinet may vary, and it does not matter), of the inside of the cabinet, by the grate. The hose attaches to a metal tube (the one I replaced with conduit, as the original rusted out). That tube follows the inverted pyramid of the media hopper down to the bottom, where it curves, and goes back up to the back-left side, and a bit past the grate. The bend in the tube has a hole in the middle of the elbow, where it would point directly towards the ground. I think the hole is about 3/8". The far-end of the tube at is pinched until the gap is about 5/16". When your siphon tube is constructed this way, it uses the fast moving air that is being sucked through the tube to draw in media. The media under the bottom of the tube elbow is somewhat protected from bearing the weight of all of the media above it. That makes it the best place to put the hole to pull the media in. Use whatever tube correctly fits into the hose that attaches to your gun. Also, and for those decrying it, putting your gloved finger over the nozzle of the gun and blipping the trigger is the standard method for clearing compacted media in the siphon tube.
Hey just thought I would give you an update on my cabinet. I made the siphon tube the way you described it worked but it was slow. I looked at the old tube setup and noticed it had a very small drilled hole 5 1/2 inch down on the gun side of the tube. I drill a 7/64 hole there on my new tube and now it's working great. I put a ball valve on the other end so I can fine tune the air flow. So thanks for your time and your information on how your blast cabinet is set up.
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