I have a new one to do as well, and I have decided to vend it out. A local company will do the whole thing, including painting the frame for <$1000. I have to take it disassembled of course.

Sam

 

Hello

If you are serious about doing your own blasting make sure you get the right gear up front. There is nothing more disappointing than buying what a salesman pushes on you only to find out it is slow and in most cases just plain does not work.

The compressor should be no less than 17 CFM @ 175 PSI (which is about 9 HP gas, or 7 HP electric) no matter what brand you get you will not be happy with anything less. Anything more is better but unless you are going pro it would be a very LONG time to recoup the money invested.

The compressor I use is an Ingersoll Rand. It is 7.5 HP electric. They make the best compressor sets in my opinion but you pay for what you get. With the setup I have the compressor will hold a little over 100 PSI while blasting… all day long.

Make sure you use a water trap to remove moisture from the air lines!
Water in the sand pot will bring things to a halt for a few hours.
Water in the system is a major pain in the …. Empty the trap often.
And did I mention make sure the trap stays emptied.

Get a pressure pot and NOT a vacuum siphon gun. The small guns are great for carburetors, (with glass beads and low pressure) door latches, engine parts, and doing frosted glass designs but they are very very slow for all out frame and body panel work. I built my own pressure pot out of an old upright 30-gallon air compressor tank. Sweep up the media, shovel into a bucket and pore it through a screen to get the fine stuff out of it, then back into the pot. The Texas blasters I have seen are built rather well and you can get parts for them easily.

I sent my cab and frame to the blasters. They have the big equipment to get the job done fast. It cost me 450.00 for both and they had them for 3 days. I do all the other stuff in a small canvas portable carport I use to blast in. Some plastic and duct tape makes a good blasting booth and saves a lot of money reusing the blast media.

Match the nozzle of the blaster to the compressor CFM. Using a bigger nozzle without using more CFM is a waste of time. The smaller you go the longer it will take to do the job, but alas the larger you go the more the equipment will cost.

Use the PLASTIC blasting media. Glass beads give a great finish but your body panels count on the stress induced in the panels when they were pressed to hold their shape and strength. Glass beads and just plain old sand will (shot peen) the surface removing the temper of the panel. You will not see a difference until you put a dent in one and then try and fix it.

Have you ever heard of shot peening forged assemblies such as crankshafts and rods to remove surface stress? Well using glass beads or sand has the same effect on body panels and the panels DEPEND on that stress to hold the shape and curves of the body's lines. Plastic will do the same eventually but tends to remove the softer materials first and not etch into the metal as bad as sand.

I do use glass beads in places like cracks and where thick rust is present.

Ware a respirator… NOT a paper mask!!!

A hood is fine if you are somewhere you will not get dust built up to the point it is coming up under the hood. A half mask is good a full-face mask is better.

Protect your eyes! Anything shot out of a sand nozzle will hurt like hell in your eyes.

If you truly are going to get your own rig please make absolutely certain you do NOT use just regular old play sand from the hardware store. If you were to look at a sand shard under a microscope it resembles a small bit of broken glass. Have you ever cut your finger on glass? Now imagine hundreds of millions of small bits of glass in tinny soft air sacs in your lungs. Silicoses is NOT reversible and is cumulative to boot which means it only gets worse over time.

Now you may think wearing a full mask and using regular sand is fine which it is and that’s what most people do. But the stuff that gets in your hair, cloths and settles on all the surfaces around where you work is still dangerous. Do you wear your mask while you clean up? What about your wife on wash day when she shakes out your cloths before stuffing them in the washer, what about your kids? What about the kids playing down the road in that cloud of very fine dust?

Silicoses is NOT reversible and is cumulative. I work for a masonry restoration company and have seen the results of silicoses first hand. Believe me it ain't pretty, it is permanent and it can be fatal.

Cyruscosmo… A.K.A. Scott

 

I have been meaning to post this somewhere on here, this seems like a good spot. I bought my son a Sears 2 HP oilless compressor outfit to get him started, basically to have something (better than nothing). It's the same unit sold all over under different names.

Well, 2 yrs down the road it died. I pulled off the cover to see what was up. It is a vacuum cleaner (shop vac) motor that drives a short little belt to a crank. The bearing on the crank "connecting rod" blew apart (a 2" bearing with 7 *****??? how cheap can you get!) and the ***** fell into the belt, shredding it.

So get this: NO ONE that I can find sells the belt! Or any of the other parts of the compressor "assembly". The ONLY part you can buy is the complete motor/compressor assembly, for a mere $200!! This is beyond belief!

Caveat emptor...

 

WOW! never thought of that . . . thanks scott.

Again, thank you guys soooo much. it means a ton to me.
You guys truly live up to your reputations and do this site proud.

You have helped me decide to go with this local guy I found who seems to take real pride in his work. He has invited me to tour his shop before making a decision to show me samples and the shop itself.

I tried to trip him up and said i wanted sandblasting and he was like "if you dont mind me saying so, are you sure you want to do that......i would recommend plastic bead blasting ...etc etc" so i was very impressed. The first guy who hasn't wanted to just get me in the door and put a deposit. Also the first guy who considered what i had before giving me a general quote . . all the other guys were like 1500 before even asking me what vehicle i had lol


he will do all the sheetmetal and frame for ~1100

im happy with that. now i just need to figure out what do when he is done. . . . i dont the metal rusting after sandblasting. I hear it happens pretty quickly. i am exactly set up to properly prime the truck so what else can i do? isnt there some sort of chemical or oil or something i can put on while i wait?

thanks again guys

 

Yeah, Cambell Hausfield compressors are made just 8 miles from my house, alot of folks around here think they are great, but you definately get what you pay for!!!!! There is alot of over rating when it comes to compressors. Like I said I have had Quincys forever, and I'll be a diehard Quincy fan from now on! I've rebuilt them, when I thought they needed it. Most of the time they just needed a few parts, but I decided to do it RIGHT!

I might be able to get you that belt? Since they are made just out in town from me? Do you have a part#
Later

 

i think ur probably doing the right thing in the long run to have the big stuff blasted...but i think u might wanna still get urself something on the smaller scale...ive been working on my truck now for awhile.. and it never fails..ive sandblasted the entire cab, but then the next day i start cutting out some rotted areas such as the cab corners or floor area and then there are now exposed areas that need to be blasted... i got tired of the low air pressure issue and bought myself a used tag along...it was cheap because it didnt run... to me its the only way to go....yes u ca buy some bigger electric compressors that will do the job, but to handle it easier u need something real big... and most that could handle that easily are 3 phase..i dont have 3 phase power coming here to the shop, i believe if i did i would have bought a rotary screw type compressor...would have handled it all...
anywaysssssssssss, w/ all that said.. maybe still look around for a smaller pressure type blaster u can do the little stuff w/... seems there is always something to blast....

 

Some sandblast places also do epoxy priming of the parts imediately afterwards. Ask if he does that. If not, ask him who does. Epoxy primer is the bomb! You can put body filler right over it. You can wire brush/sand it off where you will be welding. It is a very good method to save what you have stripped from rusting.

 

sorry about my last post, i was in a hurry and apparently left some words out lol

obviously i meant to say " . . what TO do when he is done" and "I don't WANT the metal rusting . . . " and "I am NOT exactly ready to prime . . . "

anyway, im sure you guys it out (-figured by the way lol)

is this epoxy priming something i can do myself?

Ive got some body work to do still like dents and crumples and stuff. i can primer it and still do those things right? or should i do that before anything even gets blasted & primered?