Sand blaster(ing)

[BSD]

BSD, I don’t know what you’ve decided on, but there are a few things you should be forewarned about. I tried to steer you towards farming this job out for a number of reasons. The cost to outfit yourself with equipment that will perform to your expectations will far exceed what you plan on spending. Unless you use this equipment on a regular basis it becomes far more expensive than hiring a mobile blaster, who the last time I checked a few years ago was charging from $600.00 -$800.00 to do a completely stripped down Z. The only requirement was, they wanted all undercoating & tarmat removed beforehand. I would not even consider blasting a car unless it is totally disassembled. I have my own equipment and have been blasting for 40 years both as a hobbyist and professionally. I learned long ago that it was not a good idea to sandblast in a garage unless that is the only thing that garage is used for. It’s impossible to close off an area to contain the sand and worse yet, the dust. That crap will get into everything. The type of equipment you are looking at is not up to par for blasting cars. As Careless pointed out you will need a large volume pressure blaster with varying sized ceramic nozzles and good moisture bottles. I use two moisture bottles, one wall mounted between the compressor and regulator and another mounted on the sandblaster. On days when moisture is still a problem I coil 25’ of hose in a 5 gal. bucket of cold water, .inline between the wall mount and the sandblaster. It allows the air to cool and condensate before reaching the second bottle. Works well, especially after the compressor is running hot on a day with high humidity. You will need a compressor that has the ability to keep up with the amount of air the blaster is consuming. The recommended spec 90 – 120 psi @ 9-13 CFM would be a bare minimum. Larger jobs require more volume. The point I am trying to make is you have to decide if what you plan on blasting is worth spending the money on the equipment or not. Did I mention that sandblasting is one of the dirtiest, nastiest jobs you will ever do? Not fun.

 

Thanks for the info geezer, i'm going to take your advice. I realized how expensive and nasty it would be after reading into it more and looking at prices. Apparently there is a guy who sandblasts professionally like 3 minutes from my garage.. Gotta go see him tomorrow and figure out a price and time.

 

I appreciate all your responses, otherwise I would of probably went out and got an expensive setup and not done the job properly and been pissed, haha.

 

Thanks!