[AT] Sandblasting

[charlie hill]

A good wire wheel on a side grinder will give you good results a lot
cheaper and probably faster than sandblasting it unless you had access
to some professional grade blasting equipment.  If the rust is just loose
surface rust and not caked on you can get good results by painting it
down with some phosphoric acid, rinsing it off and letting it dry.  Then 
paint.

Charlie  (over 20 years experience in the sand blasting and industrial 
painting industry)



-----Original Message----- 
From: Dennis Johnson
Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2016 9:33 PM
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
Subject: [AT] Sandblasting

I am making a holder for some 4' X 8' banners to advertise various church 
events. Will mount in ground so it can be seen from the road. I got some old 
1 1/2" pipe and welded it up. Then I tried to blast the rust and scale off 
of the pipe so I could prime and paint it.
I had an old suction type blaster, that seemed to work fair for a few 
previous projects. It started working fine for this, and then quit working. 
I replaced the blast gun, and it blasted about 6" of pipe and quit.
I got frustrated and went out and got a 40 pound pressure blaster from 
Harbor freight, plus another air compressor. I have one compressor that is 
about 6  or 7 CFM with a 30 gallon tank. Found another "free" compressor 
that is a real small compressor guessing about 2 CFM but was mounted on a 60 
gallons tank. Found Harbor has a compressor sale with one that was $179 
after $319 off (something my wife can understand) so I got that. It is 4 or 
5 CFM with a 20 gallons tank. Got all of these connected together and have a 
small discharge manifold I put on my shop wall.
Got the blaster assembled, put some sand in it, and it did terrible, barely 
blasting. Finally figured out the sand I had was contaminated with small 
rocks that plugged things. (Probably also the reason the suction blaster was 
not working). Went and got some insect screen, and used it as a sieve to 
screen out the rocks from the sand. Put in the the fresh sieved sand, and 
the blaster started working like it was supposed to. Worked great for a bit, 
and then blew of blast hose. Short trip to parts store for new clamps, and 
then it was working great again. Guessing a 50 pound bag of play sand will 
blast 10 to 12 feet of pipe.
After I get this blasted I need to fix a few things on the blaster like 
disassemble and rotate the handles that came installed backwards.
Anyway I am happy that I now have a blaster that works great, plus enough 
compressors and tanks to blast about 5 or 6 foot of pipe at one time, and 
then shut down the blaster and prime that section while the compressors 
catch up.
Grit would be better, but this sign holder is about 10' high, with two sides 
that are about 10' long spaced at 90 degrees, so the outside pipes are about 
16 foot apart. Point is that it is too big to blast where I can save and 
recycle the grit and sand is cheaper.
Sent from my iPad
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