Well my plans for the day have been squelched by equipment failure and 88° weather so I figured I’d just spend the morning complaining.
Now this story starts a couple of weeks ago with my taking my running boards of to have them blasted. I’ve already yapped about the problems I created when I painted them, and this tale isn’t related to the paint. We’re only talkin’ about 20 sq.ft. of surface and when I picked them up at the blaster to the tune of $75 I kind of choked up a little. After all, how long could it take to blast them with an Ingersoll Rand tow behind air compressor that supplies 175cfm through an 1” hose using a nozzle with a 1/2” opening. During my working career I’d cabinet blasted hundreds of items for work and hundreds more for myself during my lunch break and it shouldn’t take that long.
Well a week went by and I managed to swallowed that one, and since I don’t have the room nor the bread for a good sand blast cabinet, I was forced to take a couple of the 16.5” rims to him that I needed for my radial tire endeavor. I had to wait a couple of days to get them back because he was to busy to get to them while I waited. How bout forty bucks for the two of them he says when he finally got to them. I says, cr%$& I only paid ten bucks each at the junkyard, your killin’ me!
It was about at this point that I decided that I’d had enough. At this rate by the time I got the whole body and frame blasted I’d have three or four thousand in sandblasting. When I got home I dragged out all of the catalogs and start comparing pressure pots at Eastwood, Northern Tool, TCP, HF, etc. The one that I settled on was the 110 lb (20gal) pressure tank that looks like a big over grown Freon tank. All the vendors carry the same one and they all look like they get them from the same source. The HF unit was on sale for $129 down from $199 It comes with a water trap, pressure gauge, three globe valves a 8’6” x 1/2” ID hose and deadman’s blast gun w/four ceramic nozzles, a safety hood and nice big funnel. so how could I pass a deal like that up, and I grabbed a 9x12 HD tarp for another $12 on the way out. Man was I ready to save money now!!!!
On the way home I stopped by Mainards and picked up 100lb of Black beauty for $12, now all I had to do is spread things out and got to work.
Now here’s the “what’s wrong with this picture” part! About 10 in the morning I dumped the hundred lbs in the tank after wrapping a piece of alum. screen wire around it and I figure I’ll be done and cleaned up in time for lunch. I got about one squirt out of it before it clogged up. This was an easy fix, just some metal chips left over from the manufacturing process inside the tank clogging up the nozzle. I would encounter this a half dozen more times with chips and pieces of threads that were broken off when they over tightened the pipe threads. All, of the pipe threads by the way were tightened all the way down till they bottomed out, and some still leaked air. The “economy” hood that came with it only drapes over your front and back like chaps and the sides are open. This doesn’t leave any fresh air in but does leave plenty of dust and sand in to get in your hair, ears, eyebrows, and down your neck. A dust mask is a must and with no air circulation your glasses and lens fogs up in about 30 seconds. About every 10 minuets or so you have to stop for 15 or 20 minuets and take up the tarp, recover the sand and sift it through the screen wire filter on the funnel. I perform this exercise literally 15 or 20 times through out the day and after four hours of blasting the sand has been pounded to a fine powder. I’m only recovering about 1/3 of what I started with and it’s mostly powder it’s to late to go get some new stuff so I just keep recycling whats left.
How much have I got done so far you ask? ONE RIM and ONE half of the other. darn, another clog and it taint in the nozzle this time. This one is at the bottom and I can see water bubbling out of the joint of the tee and valve at the bottom of the tank. I know that sand and water don’t mix in a blaster especially when the sand has been pounded into powder. On my 60 gal tank I have a large water trap that filters through a desiccant bed and I’m getting only a few drops of water out of the water trap on the unit, so not much water could be getting by. By now it’s four in the afternoon, I’m dripping wet from head to toe with sweat mixed with sand and sand dust and I just tain’t about to start disassembling things to clear this clog. On top of all of this the rubber around the nozzle and the “hard alloy” and rubber stop pad have had a slot worn in them from abrasive so for the last hour or so I couldn’t stop the flow completely. How much have I got done so far you ask? ONE rim and ONE half of the other!
Now I ask you, just how much do you think I saved by blasting these wheels my self???? Right about now, that $20 a wheel looks realllll cheap to me! I shudder to think what a nightmare it’s gonna be striping the whole frame.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
