For years I got by with a 2 hp Sears 20 gallon tank compressor. Painted a couple of cars with it and a couple of boats. Then I moved up to a 60 gallon tank/5 HP upright. It died after a few years of very hard work, so now we are operating off of my Sons 60 gallon/ 6 hp upright, and that is about to crap out too, from being used day in and day out for about 4 years.

I have learned a couple of things about compressors along the way. If you are truly just going to do occasional priming, blowing off, etc., the small units that have a 20 gallon tank/ 1.5 to 2 hp are fine. But if you are going to DA, run other high consumption tools, and (especially) sandblast, you need a big unit. And a twin cylinder at that. My 5 hp would run out of air when I blasted, and I would have to stop every couple of minutes to let it catch up, even running a DA kept it running constantly.

Since we are getting more serious about our projects, I am going to take the two tanks we have (both 60 gallons, and hook them together into one big tank, and buy a twin cylinder compressor from Eaton Compressor in Ohio, and hook up a very good 5 hp motor to it. This should give me all the air we need to do anything.

The reason I mention Eaton is that I bought one of their units for our marina, and it really rocks. We could never run two DA's with our old unit, but the one we got from Eaton does that and more. Shipping and all was like $ 400.00, but that is only for the bare compressor. I figure another $ 200.00 for a good motor, and we will fab up some mounts to hook it all together.

It is really frustrating to have too small of a compressor, but if you are doing the minor stuff you outline, Harbor Freight, Home Depot, Sears, etc all have pretty reasonable units for that.

Don