So while my shell is off getting its makeover I have decided that I will get all those fiddly bits and pieces painted ready for the assembly and so I bought myself an air compressor and a sandblasting cabinet.
Now the street I live on is a 7 house cul-de-sac with only single phase power, Well maybe I live at #6 and Western power have told me that #5 and 7 have 3 phase power and even though their lines run from the pole out the front of my place I can only have single phase. So I pointed this out and they said they would investigate… well they did investigate and turns out they were wrong… dur Fred, I can have three phases I just need to pay to get it connected so I looked into the costs of that added in the cost of a decent three phase compressor and so I did my research and got the best single phase 15amp compressor I could for a reasonable price (remember the budget thing I am still dreaming I can stick to and it looks like I can if I forgo the motor, exhaust, wiring, diff, rims and tyres and just a few other things to get 3 phase). Anyway the compressor I got has a 60 litre tanks and a free air delivery of 309lpm (just a whisker under 11cfm) and a max pressure of 150PSI so it should do the jobs I need. Others claim they can go to 340lpm but they have smaller tanks and a max pressure of 115PSI and they cost about 50% more so I didn’t bother with them.
Now its pretty humid where I live so I run a 15 meter length of hose along the shed wall and back to allow the air to cool before the moisture trap/ regulator which seems to fill every few hours, I looked at a fancy copper pipe system with multiple drops and run off taps but I am too tight to spring for it. Besides the 15 meter run of hose does a good job of cooling the air and when it comes time for painting I will run another line through an esky of ice water and add a second moisture filter just before the gun and that should sort any moisture issues I have. Look I know it’s a lot of effort for brackets that you aren’t going to see but hey, I know they are there and I want them done right.
Next was the sandblasting cabinet, I spoke to all the likely suppliers in town and most of them offered me small industrial units that were just way too much for my budget, so I looked at making my own. I factored in the viewing window, gloves, light, the body, hinges, catches, dust ports and stand and then I found a small bench top cabinet for under $200 (199 is under 200 you see) and by the time I got the materials and made it I would be over the 200 hundred mark so I thought, like the rotisserie, why not and I bought it.
What a mistake. It doesn’t have any form of dust extraction and so after a few minutes of use it’s too dusty to see anything going on side. The seals just don’t work. The angle of the hopper is too shallow so the garnet just collects around the edges. This means that the area around the grit intake runs dry and the sand blaster turns into an air duster which is strangely ineffective at removing anything but very good at throwing up more dust and making it even harder to see! Also it comes with these “quality” ceramic tips (poor is a quality too you know) which enlarge with use reducing the effectiveness of the blaster the longer you use it. Also the light source is behind the work so good luck checking to see if your parts are clean. Then I found that even on my bench top it was a little low and so after a few hours of use my back would start to tighten up. No, it’s not because I am getting old, sure it might be a small factor but honestly it was due to standing hunched over for hours on end, you guys believe me right?
So I got a little creative, Firstly I made a table for it so I could use it standing upright but the arm holes are so close together I feel like a girl pinching her elbows together trying to make her cleavage look more impressive than it really is.
Next I ripped the pathetic pod filter out and put a 25mm poly tee on the inside and a 25mm pvc threaded adaptor on the outside. The pvc adaptor was cut back so they do up on the side of the unit leaving no gap. I still need a filter of sorts so a rolled up scotch brite pad works as the filter. From the adaptor I connected an elbow and ran a length of pipe down to a short length of beverage tube. That way I can connect it up to an el cheapo 20l bucket vac hose that I bought specifically for the job (I don’t want to trash my good shop vac)
So with it all plumbed up and the joins tapped with duct tape for ease of removal I fired it up, and… it worked well… too well in fact, so well that it sucked one of the gloves clean off, Hmm too much suction so I took the highly sophisticated approach of cutting a few slots in the pvc pipe to reduce the vacuum and now it works great. I also used an adjustable spanner to flare the flange that hold the gloves in place so that the more it pulls against the clamp the tighter it gets.
With the seals I tried adding a layer of high density foam sealing tape that worked… for a little while but in the end proved to be useless, so now I use a roll of packing tape to seal the lid as best I can otherwise the lid gets covered in dust and sand pretty quick and cuts visibility down severely. It’s a bit annoying having pull the tape on and off each time I want to open the blaster but it is teaching me to be more patient and I just get around it by putting several pieces in at a time.
Next I solved the lack of hopper angle with something I like to call a stick. Yep I got a bit of cover batten that I had laying around the workshop cut it to suit and chucked it inside the cabinet. I removed that little work tray they give you pretty quickly as all it did was get in the way and so when the sand starts to pile up around the edges I just scrap it back to the middle with the stick!
Next issue was the ceramic tips, they get flogged out after a few hours use and your 4mm hole ends up at about 8mm after while and while sure you can buy replacement tips for about $20/4 online or $10 each locally I didn’t fancy constantly buying new tips so I though bugger it I will get some made out of metal. Now that’s not my idea. After talking to Gav who is restoring one of the other Antique Beige coupe’s he was having the same issue, so he turned some up on a lathe and reckons they work great, now I only have a small timber lathe which strangely doesn’t work for metal so I went to see a local machinist.
I showed him what I wanted and he looked at me and said “mate 5-10 minuets on the lathe no worries but I have a minimum charge of our hourly rate”, so I told him “no worries mate, make me as many as you can in one hour and them stop”. He looked at me and I said “well if you’re going to charge me for an hour do an hour”, he laughed at me and said “fair cop mate” and off he went. Turns out they could make 2 in an hour, hmmm, the machining on them is pretty ordinary one is covered in deep scratches but the other looks ok, I tell you I am constantly unimpressed with the tradies in this town. If it wasn’t for the great beach’s, fantastic fishing, great 4 wheel driving track’s, lack of traffic, working 6km’s from home having 3 bottle shops in a 1km radius of my house and the awesome climate I’d be out of here in a flash.
Well the steel tips do last longer than the ceramic ones but the bore still enlarges with use and at 40 bucks a pop they just don’t seem economical for some reason, so I looked on EBay (come on we all do it) and found I could get 12 delivered for $40 so I bought them and they seem to work just fine.
As those of you who may have used them know, the viewing window in a sand blasting cabinet is protected by a plastic sheet, that way when it gets too frosted from use you can just change it over. Well they don’t last too long and you only get a 10 pack with the unit, so I have burnt through most of them, yeah I know, wanting to see what I am doing, what was I thinking.
So I rang around and found out that a pack of 5 replacement sheets is $20.00 plus postage, again it will come as a surprise that yet again Perth was less than half the local price and while it’s not that much, I didn’t want to have to wait for them to be posted. So I went down to the local fabric place and bought some of that clear PVC table cloth that I am sure we all remember as kids. It works, it’s not great but I get 8 bits from a meter that costs $6.00 and while it doesn’t come with the double sided tape to fix it like the replacement ones I found I always needed to tape the corners to stop the sand getting in between and scratching the window anyway. Then I had the idea of using a sheet of A3 laminate, just run it through the laminator with no paper and it comes out clear, they are harder than the PVC so they last a lot longer before becoming too frosted to use and they are a lot easier to swap.
As for the lighting issue, I tried setting some flood lights but they just reflected off the “glass” and made it hard to see anything so I put a rechargeable spotlight on top of the viewing window and bring the parts to the beam of light to see if they are getting cleaned.
Your probably wondering why I just didn’t get the sandblaster locally, well I know the guy that does the blasting nowadays, I’ve worked with him in the past and to call him a useless sack of manure is an insult to the sack and the manure, besides I like doing this sort of mind numbing repetitious work, I find it relaxing after my day to day and it of course it has absolutely nothing to do with that desire that I have to horde as many tools as I can. (Mind you, I don’t buy tools that I don’t use and I make sure I get my value out of every tool I buy… Honest) (need to include that last bit for my wife who will be reading this)
Now if you ever want to buy a sand blaster I have a few tips for you:
1) Don’t. Build one it will be much better
2) Don’t overload the unit with sand, use a little as possible
3) Clean all the grease off parts first
4) Give them a quick once over with a wire brush, it breaks the surface of the paint and makes it a lot easier
5) Got those bits primed as soon as possible after sanding, they will start rusting super-fast
6) Use all your PPE especially a quality dusk mask not one of those waste of time paper ones.
Well that’s all I can think of for now and so here are pictures of my air compressor, “quality” cabinet and a few before and after of some parts.
