I bought a new 10 gallon unit today $109.00. Bought it locally which costs a little more but I can get replacement nozzles 7 days a week. The tip is a real gun not 1/4 turn valve. You are not kidding when you say quarts gets everywhere, and it stings a little. Didn't take long for me to get a jacket, gloves, and put on the hood over my safety glasses. Did a nice job of cleaning up the few pieces I did. Seat brackets, a heater shell I found that didn't have any rust holes, and the yoke for my drive shaft.

 

They are pretty fun to use, at least for a while .

 

I purchased the one from Harbor Freight a few years back. I know it needs a contant 110 lbs of air pressure to work effectively. I guess it works OK, I can't get larger items in the container and I've found that the smaller pieces clean up just as well with the wire wheel and certain cases much quicker. In otherwords, I don't use mine much. The parts look nice after sandblasting though.

 

I saw an article somewhere on how to build a sandblast cabinet using plywood. I thought I saved it to file, but I can't find it. If I run across it again I will post the address.

Rod

 

I would never use plywood, The sandblast sand is fine and plywood would be very hard to seal, especially under blasting conditions. I'm even paranoid with my metal cabinet, because the bag with the sandblast sand states,"Use caution, may cause cancer!" Even with my sandblaster, I use a face mask.

 

My thoughts were, that opposed to just using a blasting away with a bucket and sprayer on the driveway. A cabinet even homemade could be of some benifit. I built a enclosure out of cardboard to contain the sand. I wouldn't use any unit without a good cartridge mask, and eye protection.

 

Check out this FTE tech article for the plans to build a grit blasting cabinet.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/article/...g_Cabinet.html

Plywood is fine with SiO2 (silica sand) as long as you seal the seams with silicone or something similar. You'll get silica dust outside any cabinet if you use silica sand (plain old sand). That's one reason I avoid it if at all possible and use some other blast media like coal slag or CrystalGrit. As already mentioned, any time you use silica sand, you should use an OSHA resiprator rated to remove silica particles. The danger is that long-term exposure can result in Silicosis, a nasty lung disease.

 

I bought both of my sandblasters at Harbour FReight, the portable one where you fill it up with sand and screw the lid shut works great as long as the sand is super filtered, no water gets in it etc, but my cabinet sucks. you have to have a huge compressor or one that builds air quik. i have a craftsman 60 gallon compressor and it wont keep up. What I do is use my portable sandblaster, stick the hoseinto the cabinet and go to town. My compressor can keep up with it, and it seems to work better. Im gonna be using it soon to strip lil places on my 55 soon. door jambs etc.

 

I do have a mask with cartridges that is OSHA approved. I also have a variety of cartidges. I am not sure what I used the bag is gone. It was labeled as quartz I believe. I started useing it for painting when using rattle cans. It didn't look like sand it was small round beads. I have been looking at the blast cabinets. I was looking at a premade one. I would rather work on the truck then build a cabinet. The problem is the parts I currently want to clean up are to big for a cabinet that small. I want to clean up fenders, doors, steering coulmns, bumpers, etc. They wouldn't even fit in a hame made cabinet unless it was huge 4' tall x 6' wide? Then you couldn't realy manuever to get at the whole piece, you would have to shut down and move the piece. Not to mention at that size it would be outside. Heck might as well paint it and put some left over siding on it and call it yard art. I have seen sheets of aluminium pretty cheap from the local printing press i could line it with that for a little extra durability. With it be outside I woudn't need to hook it up to a ventilation system would I ?

 

I am not sure what size tip you are using but my unit came with various tips sizes 2.0-3.5. Put a smaller size on your blast cabinet and it will use less air.

 

Chris, you are partially correct. The home built cabinet is a 4' cube with a side port for larger items. I've done all the parts for my 56 in it except the frame rails. I do have the move the parts around inside the cabinet, but I can almost always do that without shutting down. I put the cabinet inside my garage and it does take up a 4' square spot of floor space. The big plus is that the garage stays clean and I can blast inside on cold, snowy, or rainy days.

 

I used to be a Compliance Officer for OSHA and I can tell you that OSHA doesn't approve anything. If a product says OSHA approved they are misleading you. They should state that the product meets OSHA requirements.
Second the big scare of cancer with sand blasting comes from Silica, or more precisely, crystaline silica which causes silicosis with extensive exposure. Quartz is SiO2, which is silica. Silica is the most abundant substance on earth and is going to be the major copnstituent in any sand, there is no escaping it. For more info you can check out this link;

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/silica/index.html

In the real world I'm a safety guy. Chances are that occasional exposures from sandblasting dust will not cause any lasting health issues. It is not something that you would want to be doing for long shifts on a daily basis. Out here in the west, especially this time of year, our background silica exposure can be very high due to naturally occuring dust kicked up by the wind. Basically, it is a good idea o avoid inhaling tons of dust of any kind if for no othere reason than you won't spend the rest of the day coughing, hacking, and trying to clear your nose and throat.

Protect yourselves......you're worth it

Bobby

 

It seems that whenever I look at respirators at the hardware stores they say "Not for use with sand or media blasting."

Does anyone have a good source for a respirator that meets OSHA requirements? I have one I got from work one time, but I'm not sure where to get new cartridges for it (I don't work there anymore).

 

If the hardware stores you have close to you are as bad as the ones close to me.....
I'm pretty much stuck with the big mega corporate monsters (home depot, lowes, etc)
Depending on the size of your town try a welding supplier, paint supplier, construction equipment rental dealer, etc.

You could always find a source online also. You don't need anything cancy, just something that will block particulates.

Good Luck

Bobby

 

NIOSH (affiliated with OSHA) actually certifies respirators for use with sandblasting and periodically publishes recommendations. Here is a link to a summary of the types of resiprators in their current publication.

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/silica/protect_against/abrasive/respirator_user_notice.html

The best bet is to not use a silica-based blast media, or one that contains more than about 1 or 2% silica. Specular hematite is particularly low in silica content (less than 0.5% free or crystalline) and is becoming more widely used for this reason.