Sand Blasting

Sunday we went over to a friends shop to do some sand blasting.  Matt has some white-spoke rims for the 65 Ford that a previous owner had (very badly) painted black from a rattle-can and they were pretty rusty.  I had a couple of rims for the Horizon and a few for the Caravan that had some light rusty spots that I wanted to see if I could clean up.   We brought 200 pounds of sand (crystals about the same as 100 grit sandpaper) with us.  

First Matt tried the siphon feed setup.  After finishing the first bag and not the first rim we stepped back to rethink the problem.  While thinking, I pulled out my two Horizon rims and blasted the rust off of them, which took another 1/2 bag of sand.   A large part of the problem with the white spoke rims was that the black paint had an almost rubbery texture, I could get under it with my pocket knife and peel it and pull off large chunks, but the sand just seemed to bounce off of it (just a thought, wonder if they used undercoating spray?).  So, we hit the rim with a wire wheel on an angle grinder which burned off a lot of the black paint and took off some of the loose rust.

Then my friend dug out his pressure blaster.  He hasn't used it in a few years because he felt that his siphon blaster did a better job.  After cleaning the tank, fittings, hoses and valves of caked material we commenced blasting with the remaining 50 pounds of sand.  It took a bit of trial and error, but we finally determined the best settings on the three valves, and Matt almost finished the first rim.  The pressure blaster seemed to Matt and I to cut much more efficiently.

We think that we know what to do now to finish up the rest of the rims:

1. Go over them with the wire wheel on the angle grinder.


2. Get a better hood/eye protection.


3. Get coveralls.


4. Sandblast using the pressure blaster.


5. Bring 75 pounds of sand per rim.

We've got a couple of weeks before I can buy 600-700 pounds more sand, that will give us time to work the remaining 9 rims over with the wire wheel.  I'm still hoping we can get it done before it gets too cold to paint the rims, although we might be pushing it.