Posted by Todd Wilson on Sunday, March 03, 2002 at 11:50AM :
In Reply to: What's a good sandblasting set-up? posted by James Fuller-Devine on Sunday, March 03, 2002 at 10:00AM :
I have a Sears gravity feed sand blaster. When it works it works fairly well. When it dont work it wont do jack which is about 75% of the time.
I also have a 20gal 5hp CambellHausfeld compressor that will run my blaster but it runs hard and continuous. I have a second small 5 gallon flightway compressor I hook up and run both at the same time and I have enough air then.
My opinion is to stay away from gravity feed blasters and oiless compressors.
It makes a mess when you blast so using a different media you may want to do it in a sealed container or garage where you can sweep up the media and/or recycle it. Using sand outside isnt a big deal because the sand will eventually become part of the dirt. You cant tell where I blasted with sand out back after a month or so. But sand has its down sides from the previous message of being dangerous to breath. I was not aware of the dangers and I blasted outside for an afternoon with a nice breeze going on and had dopers cough that night. Doesnt take very much and in an enclosed area would be bad real fast.
I have also found and maybe its because of my gravity feed blaster or using sand in some cases the blasting didnt do a good job and I ended up using the 3m stripping wheels on my drill to strip the paint and rust off. I then used the blaster for tight spots and angles where I couldnt get the drill wheel into.
I've seen some blasting cabinets at the farm store for about 80$ and I would say thats fairly cheap if you were to build something and have to go buy all the parts to do it.
Todd