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:
- Go over them with the wire wheel on the angle grinder.
- Get a better hood/eye protection.
- Get coveralls.
- Sandblast using the pressure blaster.
- 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.
