Bought a sand blaster today

[Cuerno Largo]

looks good.

 

[cleanpool2]

If you want to use playground sand. Lowes building supply sells Quickcrete playground sand in plastic bags. Do not use walmart brand. Make sure the sand is dry and prescreen the sand before you start.
It will have a few large rocks in it. You can tarp the area and catch the sand and reuse at least one or two more time. Just screen it before you use. Make sure you use breathing protection while blasting.
And if you do not have full head protection then make sure you put cotton in your ears to keep the sand out. Face shields help or whole head cloths with plastic view window. You will need a number of nozzel
replacements. Good luck.

 

[antFJ]

Get the 40 pound......you will be happy.

Harbor Freight Tools

Good enough to work on cruisers

so i just got the 40 lb and was trying it out today.. besides for it leaking in a few places.. which i was able to stop. mostly. the thing would only spew out sand like crazy and would only actually blast intermittently. at one point i got it to blast pretty good for a few seconds and then it would just stop blasting sand.... realized it was because i didn't put that much sand in... so i loaded it up and the thing was just spewing sand out of the of the nozzle...

i tried different pressures from 40-100psi, different nozzles and everything.

my setup is a 170 psi compressor with a filter at the compressor, a 50 foot hose, and then the filter that obviously came with the blaster (which I don't think works)

any thoughts?

 

[Project60]

I had trouble with my HF blaster at first. I ended up putting a window screen (sold in rolls at Lowes) over the funnel. That was good enough to get rid of the big chunks.

The other problem I had was when the air was "wet". Not much to do there but add more filters.

 

[antFJ]

yea.. i probably should have posted but i figured it out finally... definitely needed to sift the media.. that helped out A LOT. also I only have a 1.5 hp 26 gallon compressor... doesn't really last that long... :/ but yea. I called up HF and was like i can't figure this out. what media should i be using and the guy says playground sand.... well at $4 a bag its cheap, and it works. You won't catch me without a respirator though...

 

[toomanytoyzz]

I use silica sand only because it's cheap, and I can pick it up two minutes from my shop (80lb bag goes for $7.49). I wear a full tyvek suit/respirator etc. to keep me alive for a few extra years. If you can get black beauty go that route. I love that stuff, but can't get it locally.