Well, after a long silence, I'm back. Unfortunatly, I still have nothing to report.
It's been so cold since the beginning of January that I haven't gone down to the unheated shop to sandblast. I'm not off to a very good start with this project journal.
To be honest, I'm posting this more for advice than as an update. While I haven't been able to actually work on the truck, I have been doing some research. My original sandblasting setup consisted of a collapsible 10' by 10' canopy with a 16" board clamped to two of the legs towards the top. The board supported a tarp. I put the frame under the canopy and sandblasted into the tarp. I'm sure any of you who have experience with sandblasting are cringing at this point, and as you might expect, sand went everywhere, particularly when I wasn't paying attention and pointed the nozzle in the wrong direction! To help remedy this, another board and tarp was hung on the opposite side, creating a sort of tunnel. This helped collect the sand, but since the whole setup was outside, any noticable breeze would wreak havoc with the tarps, the sand was hard to sweep up, and it took several hours to set up every time I wanted to use it. After a few days, we decided this setup was not working, so we managed to rearange the packed hangar and moved the setup inside. We put the canopy about 10 feet from a regular size garage door in the side of the hangar, and hung the tarps so that they made a sort open tunnel from the back of the canopy to the garage door frame. We put another tarp on the floor to help collect sand, and used yet another tarp to close of the end of the canopy. This system worked MUCH better, unless the wind was blowing directly into the door it didn't bother me, sand was easier to sweep up, no daily setup was required, and I could even work after dark. However, half of the top of the tunnel was open, and the walls of the "booth" weren't completely air tight. To finish making a short story long, I am worried about the amount of dust getting into the hangar. I have tried putting a couple of box fans at the garage door, but they aren't powerful enough to do much.
I was wondering about some other options, such as POR-15. I was originally considering organic rust removers, but it sounds like the part has to be submergedinthe solution, which rules out using them on a frame. I recently heard about POR-15. After doing enough internet research to make my head spin, I found there are several other products of a similar nature are available, the most promising sounding of which was eastwood's rust encapsulator.
I just thought I'd pick stovebolt's collective mind about which of these would be best, or any other ideas about what I should do with my frame. It has what I thinking would be described as medium rust, it hasn't weakened the frame any, but there is noticeable pitting. I'm open to just about anything, just as long as it doesn't cost too much.
Thanks in advance!
