All about Sand Blasting

[david58]

Blast Cabinet Plans
Sand for sandblaster
Blasting Grit - 36 grit aluminum oxide.. good choice????
Sandblasting
3 Tanks... Sandblasting Question
==Home Made Big SanbdBlast Cabinet===
Sandblasting! Anybody out there done any?
sandblasting
soda blasting
Sand Blasters - Are Pressurized Worth the Extra Cash

[Larry Ho]

I am about to do a complete body restoration and someone recommend that I should include sand blasting in the process. Is this necessary. If so why
Can anyone tell me the process of how I should go about doing this - a step by step info which should include primer, rust treatment, sand blasting (if necessary), painting etc.
Thanks
Larry

[MNAirHead]

Larry.. thanks for the post and welcome to STF.

To help you..

Overall Sand Blasting is a frustrating task until you have expensive equipment. It takes TONS of air and Kilos of Sand.

A complete setup will probably cost you well over $1000 US dollars

• -Hood
  -Lines
  -Water Separator
  -Pressure Blaster
  -Grit Media
  -HUGE tank

For a VW it's most efficient that a blaster is only used around perimeters and tough to reach places... there is a thread above regarding warpage.

You may find quality abrasives and better electric tools may be more useful if you're just starting out.

[BUILDER]

larry ho. you may want to consider chemical stripping your car with aircraft stripper and then sanding with 80 grit sandpaper on a d/a sander. You can sandblast any rust spots before repairing them. You can get small sandblasters from SEARS or other suppliers from $50 on up.

[david58]

The restorers, many years ago, learned the hard way not to use sand on a car! It compacts the then metal (I think the metal in a Model A is thicker than a VW), makes it brittle and rust faster. If you do use sand, do not spray directly at the metal, but skip it along the surface at an angle. I'm in the process of rebuilding a pan and I would not even consider sand blasting it.

Almost any other kind of media blasting should be OK. A friend of mine has his car soda blasted. Messy and a big cloud flew over the neighborhood but it did not damage things. He had a mobile unit (professional) come over to his house and he put a plastic drop cloth over the door(s) and windows of his garage. The drop cloth over the door was weighted at the bottom so they could get in and out of the garage to bring more soda bags in without making any more of a mess. What was used was simple baking soda and they used many bags of it (Costco).

Duct tape will be good for protecting the tubes. I used it in a blast cabinet to cover the bearing housing on some trailing arms (I didn’t realize that they had sand loaded at the time) and the sand didn't seem to have any effect on the tape.

Strippers can be messy and hard to get out of some places. You might have to wash the pan in order to neutralize the stripper (depending on what you use) and also to get it out of the cracks so it doesn't affect the new paint. Also, you need to tape off the tunnel so it doesn’t get in there.

If you have any powder coaters around where you live, check with them to see who they use because they usually have this done before they shoot any material.

Hot VW & Dune buggies just did a 5 part article on rebuilding a VW pan. Granted it was a show pan but there was a lot of good stuff in the article. They ended up having their pan media blasted twice. The second time was before powder coating.

[MNAirHead]

Builder..

Do you "scratch" the paint surface with a light 40grit before you put on aircraft stripper?

[BUILDER]

Yes, usually i use 80 grit on a D/A to "break open the paint so the stripper works faster, then i take a plastic bondo squeege to scrape the blistered paint residue off of the metal. Rinse with water to "kill" the stripper and then D/A with 80 grit until metal is cleaned to your desire. Remember that you may have to apply stripper a couple of times to remove the paint before you rinse. Oh yeah, WEAR GLOVES AND SAFETY GLASSES that stuff burns like he** if it get in your eyes!!

[MNAirHead]

Any smart safety guys know the NIOSH rating or specification of the respirator suggested for paints and strippers?

T.