Or…if you’re thinking about sand blasting out back of the garage, you should really think
twice. I think I’ve gone off on this rant before, but I thought I’d give it one more try.
If I’ve got one, I’ve got ten, projects around the barn and basement that have been waiting
for blasting to remove rust and old chipped paint before I can finish them up.
A couple of old Singers, and a couple of old Stanley planes, a nice old Walker Turner 10”
table saw, a Buffalo hand crank drill press, that two bottom plow. Bunches of cleaned
engine parts ready for glass bead blasting, and the list goes on and on.
My past attempts at pressure pot blasting were dismal failures. My Harbor Freight 100lb
pressure pot, the same import that Eastwood, and Northern Tool and all the other importers
sell, has always been a wasted effort racked with frustration. Five minutes of blasting with
ten minutes of disassembly to clear clogs. Then there was the half dozen different guns
which wore out after a half hour worth of use. About eight or ten years ago, based on a
suggestion from one of the bolters here, I picked up a gravity feed siphon pot from the farm
supply. That at least worked, well a little. Took me an hour to set up tarps and get
air lines run out back of the barn and hooked up to the blaster and my hood. And that
hood!!!!! Went thru two before spending about a $150 on the best one I could find short of a
thousand dollar professional hood. Northern Tool again, even with the air line that hangs
inside the hood, it fogs up so bad from your breathing that you have to stop and undress
every few minutes and shake the sand out of the cheesy lens and your hair. And talk about
hot, anything over 68°F and you sweat a quart an hour under there. So….after all of that
another hour an half to blast the little body of the drill press and even then there was still
some paint that needed more. Then there was the cleanup and sifting sand back into the
pot.
Wanted to do some delicate parts with soda so some time ago I’d bought a pressure soda
blaster from, you guessed it…..Harbor Freight, you’d think I would have learned by now.
Bought the big one, sells now for $170 or $140 on sale. Made a nice cart to hold it and a
couple of buckets of soda. Modified the cheesy lines it came with and made up quick
couplers to it was easy to take apart and load. Threads on the top were so poorly made I
had to make up special wrenches to take it apart and even then they were so tight I could
barely get them tight. After all of that, the only way any soda would come out of the tiny
nozzle was to constantly shake the bottle with one hand while trying to aim the nozzle with
the other, did I say tiny nozzle??? The tiny bit that came out of the end wasn’t even enough
to remove mild surface rust or stains and the pattern was about the
Size of a pencil mark. So…..then I tried my little $50 hand held Speed Blaster with the soda.
Couldn’t even get it to suck any soda from its hopper and blew soda out of its vent hole.
Well I gave up on the soda also.
Bout 10 years back I bought a small bench top cabinet from, once again, Harbor Freight
Spent many hours trying to get it sealed up. Rubber weather sealed all the doors, added a
light inside. Ground up two Shop-Vacs before I gave up on that piece of crap which I put
out for the garbage man one Tuesday, along with the Vacuum’s that it ruined.
I know what a good blast cabinet can do, and what a pleasure it is to use one. I’ve spent
hundreds of hours in front of good ones. If I ever find the room for a good TP Tools Scat
blaster I’ll get one of those with a good professional filter and shaker.
In the mean time I'll have to put those projects back on the
shelf again and wait for a better day.
Denny Graham
Sandblasted out, in Sandwich, IL
Last edited by Denny Graham; 11/04/2015 2:38 PM.
