i have a 67 mustang fastback, and i know this is a trucks site, but the mustang sites dont have near as much to say it seems like. anyway, i have my car down to absolutely nothing as of now, its ready to sandblast. i dont want to risk warping panels with a sandblaster, so i was wondering if media would at least steer me clear of that risk? also, i wanted to take my car to a place to get it sandblasted, but i realized i maybe could buy my own stuff for around the same price and use it on my next car as well as this one. anyway, the guy my dad knows who was going to do it was going to charge around 300 bucks. thats pretty good, but can i get my own sandblasting stuff for that much? i would like to have my own equipment so i can use the glass bead stuff to clean other parts (say on the engine or the headers or whatever) i found some blasters that say they can use media, glass bead, or sand in them too so it would definitely be convinient. i need to clean the engine up too, so thats another reason. anyway, any opinions or feedback is appreciated

 

sand blasting DOES impact the metal. Media blasting does not.

I am working on the cab of my 55 truck and doing the blasting myself.

$400 for the compressor (minimum level), $100 for blasting equipment, not cheap for media, cheap for sand ($3 for a 50lb bag). and for me the big issue is TIME..

It will be two weekends solid to do just the cab, inside and out, all day.

so, for $300, I'd get it done..

Sam

 

well my dad is a farmer so naturally, we already have a large compressor. that said, do you still think it would be better to get my own stuff? i only need the media for the quarters and fenders, other than that its all sand. what about that?

 

that sounds ok.. still time is the thing..(for me).

Sam

 

oh i have time alright lol. just no money. i go to a private college and my parents pay half to help me out, but living on a farm makes it hard to work on "fun" or extra things. anyway, i can go home weekends whenever i want so luckily i do have time. what i was wondering is what kind of PSI do i need to effectively take off everything i need to?

 

not really a PSI thing, its really air flow.. those blasters really suck the compressor dry fast., as the nozzle wears it flows more air..

My 60gal upright is 10cfm at 90 and thats barely enough.
wish I could find a deal on a cheaper dual stage pump to replace my single stage.

Sam

 

Fastbackfreak, congrats on your 67 fastback. I have one of those also, great car. One nice thing about doing some of the blasting yourself is that you don't have to keep hauling the parts over to someone to do for you. That leaves more money to spend on other parts that you will need. And believe me you will need a lot if your going to do a first rate job.
Nice thing about media is that it is re-usable, just make sure that you have a enclosed area so that you can save it.

 

Im always in favor of buying our own tools but If I could have it done for $300 I wouldnt think twice about it. If you end up buying your equipment think about purchasing a helmet you can pump fresh air into. Its hard to blast stuff when your shield is all fogged up

 

If the compressor you have is not VERY large, you might want to get one of those tanks from sears or home depot. I added a 20 gal seperate tank that REALLY made a difference in sand blasting.

I also use a 5 gal bucked with a window screen material over it and the lid cut with large hole. This made reuse of the sand much faster, just dump the sand over the window screen screched over the top of the bucket and your done.

Use a pressure blaster NOT a vac blaster, the vac blasters are weak and run about $20, Harbor Freight sells a 40 gal pressure blaster that works great. On sale from time to time @ $79.

Keep the air lines dry too.

On auto body parts, I like to do multi pass blasting so as to not heat up and warp the metal. Strip off part of the paint, then come back and remove more later giving it time to cool. Don't just sit in one spot till clean, this causes more heat and warping.

 

Well, I'm not sure its THAT easy. I use the screen too, and we have a cat, so I use the large cat litter buckets (with lids) to screen and save sand. It takes about 10 minutes of screening to get a good 5 gal bucket full.

so I have 4 of these.. fill blaster, blast, fill, blast.. then I use my shop vac to collect, then screen (coffee can as the scoop), refill buckets, repeat.
(4x10 sucks up some time each cycle, not counting pot refill)

the biggest pain is the small fill neck on the HF blaster.. This one, Texas Blaster has a great fill funnel top.. course its $299 (140lbs) vs the HF $159 (sale price) 110lb blaster.

I have the 40lb HF version, and its good, but need a bigger pot for large (cab) blasting jobs.

Sam

 

you don't really have to worry about warping your metal with the sandblaster. I sandblast on aircraft parts(f16's) quite often sometime's 12 hours a day (mostly plastic media however). Our requirements for aircraft are that a steel surface be at least 0.0624" thick to be able to sand blast it (I believe most automobile skins and whatnot are around 0.072" ???? not sure) keeping the pressure to 60psi or less.

Now on to the advantages and disadvanteges of most of the media's that you will use. Sandblasting will do a really good job of also removing any corrosion on the surface of the metal, although it will also take off some of the metal surface with it not much though. if you go with one of the other medias (aluminum oxide, sandblasting, is still a media) such as plastic, glass bead, walnut shells, etc.... it will take the paint off fine and won't take any metal with it, but it will also leave most the corrosion (will get any small exfoliation but that's about it). Also most paint manufacturer's say that if you use pmb (plastic media blasting) and most likely the other media's other then a sand then you still have to prep the surface by sanding, If you sandblast then you can clean and paint.

If I were you then I'd just pay the money get it done for you and be done with it. it's not really always worth buying the equipment if you're only going to use it once??

and my last piece of advice if you use any media blasting at all then make sure you clean the snot out of your car before you do any painting. it's not a good idea to wet it or wash it with water until you get all the media off. all you do when you wet it is cause the media to form a film on the surface of the metal and become harder to take off. alot of it you can get from inside panels with a small mallet tap the sides of stuff then vacuum the bottom. also blow out any cracks you will have media in that car in joints and seems and small cavity's that you thought were impossible to exist in the first place spend lots of time on that, you don't want to go to paint and blow a hole bunch of sand or plastic into your beutiful paint job.

Have fun with the car.

P.S. you'll probably get more and better responses if you put this in the paint and bodywork section of this forum, Not to say that these responses you're getting now are not great!!!, and if you got any more questions about the blasting you can also pm me I kinda made my response short I love to media blast

 

well thanks for all the info... i will definitely put another same question post in the paint and body section... any information youd like to give me ill happily take. this car is hopefully one of many. im only 19 and me and my dad are doing it as a project. he owned his own body shop for ten years... which im really appreciating since i get to cut costs for so many things. so anyway part of the reason i wanted to buy my own equipment is to use it for the next car too. and i would like to be able to use it on parts, like for the corrosion on the intake and headers, and just....whatever i can find that will look better with a little corrosion taken off of it. thanks again

 

depending on where you live and how far you want to go, consider havig it chemically dip striped. They have a huge tank and dip the whole car in it, which removes the paint and any light fust that is on the car. Doing this you have no risk of sheetmetal damage due to heat warpage from blasting.