Northern Tool Sandblasters???

[Jagmandave]

I also have that cheepo Craftsman blaster, and I have a Campbell Hausfeld 5 hp 120V compressor. I used that blaster to do the entire body, inside and out on my Jag E-Type when I did the resto on it. I used the air system at work, which had more than enough capacity and completely dry air, but all I did was change the nozzle occasionaly on the blaster. Went thru bags and bags of sand too.
It all depends on what you're going to do with it, but it sounds like a small blaster would do you just fine.
My next purchase will be a cabinet, so I don't get sand/media all over the place when I want to clean up a small part.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Dave wrote <font color="green"> My next purchase will be a cabinet, so I don't get sand/media all over the place when I want to clean up a small part. </font>


I'm thinking that a cabinet might be better for my needs than a small blaster, especially considering the responses I've gotten from the collective brain trust here on TBN. This is an area I know nothing about, silly me, I figured it would be easy. I guess it is, it just seems to require quite a bit of equipment and I'd be very hard pressed to justify that much of an investment for occasional use.

So my follow up is that I've seen some relatively inexpensive cabinets that don't require the volume of air (or claim they don't). I could still use a fairly small & inexpensive compressor and I wouldn't be tying up too much money in the blasting equipment either.

So are the small cabinet blasters worth the price? Sears offers a table top unit? Ebay has some larger units periodically.

I am not looking to do body panels, but then again I'm not sure all the parts I want to mess with will fit into a cabinet.

 

[Bird]

Bob, I had the Cyclone TF5000 cabinet with glass beads; marvelous tool. The only thing I saw wrong with it was the fact that the legs were hollow so a lot of your blast medium would go in there and stay, so I just filled the legs with one of those aerosol foams from Home Depot and fixed that. Anything that would fit in there could be easily and thoroughly cleaned, and the medium used (in my case, glass beads) can be used over and over many, many times. And you don't need gloves, eye protection, breathing protection, etc. Now this cabinet from Sears looks similar except that I don't see a place to connect a shop vac. I did not get the 5 gallon shop vac with mine because I already had a 10 gallon shop vac that I used for that purpose.

Of course, I used my cabinet a LOT working on tools, but my brother and his son also brought over a bunch of front end and brake parts to clean in it when they were restoring an old Chevy Suburban.

 

[Spiffy]

If you're doing mostly smaller parts, the cabinet is the way to go. For the things that don't fit, just take the gun out (depending upon the arrangement), or buy a cheap suction gun. Or take the big stuff to somebody else for them to deal with.

As Bird noted, you'll really want a vacuum attachment. You won't regret getting one with a light too. Actually the choices do narrow a bit; you won't find a pressure unit in any but the largest [and/or fanciest] cabinets; the ability to manipulate the parts so far out weighs faster surface rates that you won't care anyway.

For things like tractors [or that horse trailer] I wouldn't trade my pressure unit, but I'm guessing the cabinet is what you need the most. I think Junkman pointed out the ability to mess up sheet metal [I stay away from automotive; don't have that problem]; I should also add that bearings, and anything that shouldn't get sand, are sand magnets!

Either way, I think something like that Puma [especially if you can find a salesman as straight as the guy Bird found] is your answer for air.