Sand blasting is overated!!!!!

Man , just got finished sand blasting the front end of the vega. Next time I will take it to a pro and pay the 2-300 dollars. I spent about 80 dollars on sand .My HARBOR FREIGHT tank/blaster is very touchy. It blast good for about 5 minutes then spits all the sand out for the next 5 minutes and it a pain in the rear to get going. The blaster was th main problem works ,does not work,works ,does not work, empty! The sand gets EVERYWHERE I put some goggles on and still got sand on my eyes. With the hood ,earplugs ,and mask/filter on it almost impossible to see. Anyways just blowing off some steam, next time I will go drop it off some where.:LOL:

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: yuppers, if it's an area bigger then I can do with my little hand held blaster, or it won't fit in the blast cabinet, I hire it done!!!! My favorite two days when I had my own large size blaster was the day I bought it and the day I sold it!!!!! Nasty work, I'd much rather hire it done!!!!!

Yep and yep. :D :D I know exactly what you are going through as we just got done blasting two cars worth of parts and I am still coughing and sneezing. I even made a shield to contain the sand like Uncle Bob suggested one time and it helped somewhat, but the area still looked like the Mojave Desert when we were done.

I mainly did it because I didn't feel like trucking the parts to the sandblast shop, but next time I am going to do that for sure. It's just one more job in life that I found out I don't want to do for a living. :LOL:

Don

i'm spoiled. i have a blast booth , complete suit with fresh air hood. i even have some ear phones in the helmet. :D it's still a lot of work to control an 1 1/4 hose. anytime the pressure in the pot falls below the pressure in the hose the media stops flowing . if the pressure in the pot is above the hose pressure by more than 5 lbs it will empty the pot. even my big pot is touchy. i keep the inlet pressure at 45 lbs. it takes that much to seal the pot or i would go lower. i use type 6 acrylic and starblast.

Hey shine how far are you from Dallas ? I will have some work in the future if you are interested. Do you do heavy equipment or body panels, or both?

Years ago when I did my other Ts and my son's 66 Mustang I rented the Big compressor/sandblaster on wheels from our Rent & Save here in town. It worked great, did it outside, couldn't have been happier.

About 6 weeks ago I blasted the frame work of my T coupe where the cowl bolts on, figuring it would be easier with it apart than later bolted together. Used my brother-in-law's little pressurized Cummings he just bought - Bad News, came out in spurts or all at once.:mad:

Suchs them little syphon ones worked better.

I have a small drop-feed blaster from Northern Tool. It worked great for me. I blasted my rear axle housing, the third member, and a bunch of other parts. I had no problem with feed rate or clogging. Vision was a little tough because I had a cheap hood. I took the frame (Gibbon got it all rusty) to a commercial blaster because it was just too much area. The only thing I would do different is ask him to use a finer medium. It took a lot of work to get all the "stuck" sand off of the frame, and to get the primer to smooth it out for paint. For anything larger than an axle, A-arms, punkin, etc., it goes to the guy with the big equipment.

The secret is dry air. Sand blasting is high flow, and the compressor generates a lot of water. If you don't have a way to dry the air, you end up with endless clogs in the bottom of the hopper or in the hose.

I wore a good painting/particulate filter, and did most of the blasting out in my yard. I just let the medium incorporate into the soil.

BTW, Bluff Dale, TX is about 45 mi SW of Dallas

We use a garage sale large nylon tent (we got cheap) for our sand blasting room.
big zippered doors and screen windows that let the air out and the floor keep the sand in.
When we are done we lift the tent with our overhead hoist and all the sand goes into the center and easy to reclaim.

It gets the job done
hank

Now that s a good idea. I was thinking of getting a little shed.

That is a good idea. Beats the system we had.

Don

I gotta friend that just re-opened his soda blasting business, relocated to Tenn from Vegas. THAT my friends is the ticket!! For $500-$1000 based on the vehicle (amount of paint, filler...involved) he can blast it down to the next layer of paint or primer, or take it all the way to bare metal, or just leave in the bodywork... AND, the glass, chrome and rubber can all stay in it because the medium (baking soda) won't hurt it!!! It leaves just enough "texture" that the primers will adhere well without having to re-prep AND it won't rust if left outside for up to 3 months!!! They have NO IDEA why it won't rust, it just doesn't! So, thats what I do when I need something blasted. Check around your area to see if anyone is doing it, it WORKS!!!

I do know a guy that blast with soda. Yes, it is great! The only thing is it does not do much for any rusted areas, IMO. It does paint and fillers no prob, rust nothing. I guess you could soda blast the vehicle and rust spots you use regular media. Dont know I just did not like the results on my truck it did have a lot of surface rust though.

If he gets something with a lot of rust, he'll soda then sand the rust areas. It seems to work pretty good on surface rust, but you are correct, for heavily rusted ares, sand is nessesary.

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Originally Posted by BigTruckDriver

.My HARBOR FREIGHT tank/blaster is very touchy.

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ya want know the secret to working one of those tanks?????

here's a site I found while looking for a picture of the tank w/a good idea.

AND this picture is how to adjust the sand flow to make the blaster work better. Because it trying push a lot of sand when the valve is WIDE open. This is the way we've been using my blaster & it works great...joe
http://home.fuse.net/davestr4a/Paint...er/IMAG003.JPG

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Originally Posted by TooMany2count

ya want know the secret to working one of those tanks?????

here's a site I found while looking for a picture of the tank w/a good idea.

AND this picture is how to adjust the sand flow to make the blaster work better. Because it trying push a lot of sand when the valve is WIDE open. This is the way we've been using my blaster & it works great...joe
http://home.fuse.net/davestr4a/Paint...er/IMAG003.JPG

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Believe me , I did that too:whacked: . I adjusted the sand flow all I could, I tried everything , but I think my main problem was like stated above. Like Henry Rifle said, the ket is a dry system.there was moisture in the system.

I blasted the bed of my 66 C10 using a cheapie suction type gun, using sand.

did have some trouble with clogging. Putting my finger over the nozzle for a moment ( blows out the line ) got it going again. Other than that no complaints, but it is a time-consuming process. If your time is worth money, then it's worthwhile to have it sent out.

I blasted my truck frame over Thanksgiving weekend, everything went fine :D

I've got a home made pressure blaster I built years ago and the only time I've had problems with it over the years has been when I've tried to blast when there's a lot of humidity in the air.

When there is a lot of humidity I don't even bother trying anymore....I know I'll just get agrivated and give up till a dry day anyway.

i added a 30 x 40 to my building to put the blast booth in. i built it so all that will go in is my rotisserie . if i hadn't i would be overrun with horse trailers. i do blasting for car people but no farm equipment :D i'm down by stephenville on 377.
soda blasting leaves no anchor pattern . so you must sand afterwards. it is sodium bicarbonate ( salt ) and must be neutralized or you will have serious adhesion problems. i will not paint a car that has been soda blasted. too risky. i researched blasting for a year before building my set up. there are hundreds of media's to use. i settled for type6 acrylic and starblast. the starblast leaves a fine anchor pattern that covers with one coat of epoxy. it cleans out the pits and cracks and leaves no contaminates .

heads up on play sand. i contains some salt and can cause rust in seams and such.

[quote=shine]
soda blasting leaves no anchor pattern . so you must sand afterwards. it is sodium bicarbonate ( salt ) and must be neutralized or you will have serious adhesion problems. i will not paint a car that has been soda blasted. too risky. QUOTE]

This explanation is straight from Wikipedia encyclopedia:

Sodablasting is a non-destructive method for many applications in cleaning, paint stripping, automotive restoration, industrial equipment maintenance, rust removal, graffiti removal, "molecular steel pacification against rust", :HMMM: oil removal by saponification and translocation, masonry cleaning and restoration, soot remediation, boat hull cleaning, food processing facilities and equipment.

I've had 2 vehicles soda blasted and they both had enough "anchor pattern" to accept the epoxy primer without an need for any other prep. The only other thing we did before priming was wipe down with wax and silicone remover because that is standard proceedure in my shop. Jobs been done 8 and 5 years with no issues whatsoever... Not saying your right or wrong, just my experience.

when researching the media's before i opened i looked into everything i could find. what i got from media suppliers was soda was great for cleaning but they advised against it for my application. only because of the risk of problems with adhesion . i simply can not risk a major repaint on the cars i build. not much of a gambler :3dSMILE: we dipped some model a's back in the 70's. had 5 repaints before it was over. so to this day i wont touch a dipped car.
on anchor pattern . the soda is 2.5 mohs or less. walnut shell is 3.0 to 3.5 and acrylic is 3.5 to 4.0 . none of these are considered hard enough for an anchor pattern . the acrylic will leave the metal looking smooth. 4.5 to 5.0 is considered to be a good anchor pattern that will not be too hard to hide. aprox the same as 80 grit. don't know the answer to all this. just know i cant strip off 15k worth of work and redo it. wouldn't take many of those to close the doors on me. :D the starblast works great for removing rust and leaves about a 6.0 anchor pattern depending on how many recycles it has gone through. glad the soda worked out for you. nothing worse than an " oh shit!" had enough of them to last.

Mike P wrote:

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When there is a lot of humidity I don't even bother trying anymore....I know I'll just get agrivated and give up till a dry day anyway.

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You mean to tell me there's humidity in Arizona????:confused: I thought all the old geezers and snow birds move there to avoid humidity and wet stuff. :LOL:

i should have a dryer on my big compressor but i dont run it non stop. on certain days it will make ice in the drop nozzle but i just release for a few seconds and it melts out. not as bad as the small ones though. i have one of those too. not sure how it survived.

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heads up on play sand. i contains some salt and can cause rust in seams and such.

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Not only that, but using play sand (silica sand) can result in a severe lung disease, silicosis. That's why they don't use sand in sand blasters any more.

Shine, I would love to hear some details on your blast booth.

It may just be the money maker I have been looking for.

EG