I am slowly working on fixing up my rusting 45. I got a 120V Hobart 140 wire feed welder with gas a few years and and have been busy practicing grinding.
I wanted to sand blast the many rust spots on the body, but not strip down the entire cab and box at one time to get blasted by a professional place. I needed a home sandblasting rig so that I could tackle one spot at a time, on my own schedule.
A couple of weekends ago I picked up a used Husky 60 gal compressor that claims 13.5 cfm at 90 psi. Enough to run a small sandblaster unit.
As space is always a challenge, and I didn't want to spend a lot, I bought a cheap siphon type blaster from Home Depot. It is on the US HD website for $9. In my local HD it was $39. I found a Harbour Freight type store that sold an identical unit for $18 and HD reluctantly matched it.
I did a bit of reading about sandblasting and the consensus is to avoid sand if you are doing body work. That's OK with me because there are silica issues with sand.
I chose to try using crushed glass. It was $10 for a 55 lb bag.
My first sand blasting project was to be my split rims. I tried doing the electo-derusting method (that'll be another thread maybe) with a less than satisfactory result.
The rims were a large area to sandblast, and were quite pitted on the inside. Because they are not airtight, or even watertight, water gets inside the rim and takes a long time to dry out.
I spent 2 hours and a bag and a half of the media to do one side of a rim. This was not the right tool for the rims.
It did a good job, but it did not have the strength or volume to do the job in a timely manner. I went to the local seld-serve sandblasting outlet the following weekend and did all five in one hour for $100.
I tried a couple of spots on the body with more satisfactory results. This unit will nicely do for the rust spots on the sheet metal.
I have since talked with a pro sandblaster and he suggests that maybe I need to get more air in with the media. The unit has a sleeved metal pipe that gets inserted into the media. The sleeve is meant to allow air to get down the the end of the pipe that sucks up the media. I will try it with a larger sleeve the next time.
I have a Quincy 5 HP, 2-Stage, 80-gal vertical, 230volt, Single Phase, 23 amps, 17.2 cfm @ 175 psi, 942 rpm compressor. It does cycle when I sandblast - as opposed to running continuously - but it does cycle frequently. If I did more sandblasting, I'd even be considering upgrading my compressor...
Buy the Harbor Freight pressurized pot blaster. They have these on sale all the time for under $100. This will dramatically increase the effectiveness of the media. I have always used sand in my HF blaster. Just make sure to use a cartridge in your mask capable of filtering out the fine silica. I rigged up an old welding helmet with a fresh air supply. I used a small vacuum cleaner with the hose in "blow" mode and use a long hose so the vacuum can set up wind of the blasting. Keeps me cool and dust free.
