Experiences with wet sandblasting?

[vtcruiser60]

Have you all heard of this tool and process? It seems like an economical alternative to a dry media sandblaster. If you have a solid pressure washer and don't want to screw around with a blast cabinet, pressure pot and a large ass compressor....seems like a nice option.

http://cgi.ebay.com/HIGH-PRESSURE-W...ryZ50388QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Anyone have any experience or thoughts?

 

[bigasschunk]

Northern Tool sells a setup that works pretty well with a less powerful machine. Obviously not as well as having it professionally done, but well enough to get decent paint prep.

I have only seen it work with cheap sand, but StarBlast or something like that may work better to cut hevy rust but it did a pretty good job.

 

[webelk6]

wet sandblaster=s***. nuff said as stan lee would say.Trust me , I know. The only reason for wet blasting is to keep the dust down in INDUSRIAL applications. I.E. tanks in downtown timbuktoo etc.

 

[vtcruiser60]

wet sandblaster=s***. nuff said as stan lee would say.Trust me , I know. The only reason for wet blasting is to keep the dust down in INDUSRIAL applications. I.E. tanks in downtown timbuktoo etc.

I assume with your tagline (Weber Painting) you have a solid idea of what you are talking about. I bumped into the idea through a neighbor. He said he saw a dude with a wand style attachment affixed to a modest sized pressure washer. He was impressed with the wands ability to descale rust.

So I looked it up online and see various places offering wands from $65 on up. It looks like a siphon fed sandblaster gun, with the vacuum pressure created by the outbound water.

It seemed like a more inexpensive set up than a massive compressor and a sandblast pressure pot. Both wet blasting and pressure pot blasting would make an incredible mess outside of a blast tank. So....price seemed to be the deciding factor.

Am I thinking about this wrong....?

 

[cruiser88]

I assume with your tagline (Weber Painting) you have a solid idea of what you are talking about. I bumped into the idea through a neighbor. He said he saw a dude with a wand style attachment affixed to a modest sized pressure washer. He was impressed with the wands ability to descale rust.

So I looked it up online and see various places offering wands from $65 on up. It looks like a siphon fed sandblaster gun, with the vacuum pressure created by the outbound water.

It seemed like a more inexpensive set up than a massive compressor and a sandblast pressure pot. Both wet blasting and pressure pot blasting would make an incredible mess outside of a blast tank. So....price seemed to be the deciding factor.

Am I thinking about this wrong....?

A siphon system sucks,sorry. We only used wet blasting in lead abatement jobs to keep the flying lead down.

 

[Brindleboxer]

One advantage to this style of blasting is that most cities will still allow this type of blasting without permit/licsence. In the past few years I have been noticing a trend of cities and states passing laws that restrict what chemicals the average joe can use. Currently, in my county it is getting difficult to do alot of this type of work yourself. Hell, there used to be two or three shops that would rent out boths to people that wanted to spray their own stuff but they have all been forced to close because of stricter regulations and fines.

I will conceed that this is not the most ideal/efficient system for stripping down parts but it will remove road grime and sludge/oil/grease from parts and does an adequate job at removing hard scale and such.

In turn, using this method you open yourself up to more hands-on prep work for parts that require a smooth finish but actually reduce overall labor for parts that do require detail work (will not be seen often).

I believe that Spike's Powerblock just did a piece on one of these systems about a month or two ago. Maybe there is still a link on their website.

Glen

 

[Deny]

So are you guys saying that it is basically an upgraded pressure washer? My dad just picked one up for me, and can't wait to give it a try, only talked to one person about it who acctually used it, and he says it works great (great as in gets all the stuff he wants off, no dust, and able to do it in the back yard, using ok sand.
Cheers,
Deny

 

[webelk6]

I assume with your tagline (Weber Painting) you have a solid idea of what you are talking about. I bumped into the idea through a neighbor. He said he saw a dude with a wand style attachment affixed to a modest sized pressure washer. He was impressed with the wands ability to descale rust.

So I looked it up online and see various places offering wands from $65 on up. It looks like a siphon fed sandblaster gun, with the vacuum pressure created by the outbound water.

It seemed like a more inexpensive set up than a massive compressor and a sandblast pressure pot. Both wet blasting and pressure pot blasting would make an incredible mess outside of a blast tank. So....price seemed to be the deciding factor.

Am I thinking about this wrong....?

In that application, it could work, however, being underpowered sometimes can create a career out of a normally quick job.

I have never had "good" experiences with siphon type blasters. You might just want to rent a unit before buying one.

 

[photogod]

The guys on Spike were using soda, I think, not sand