charlz
Elite Member
I have a Harbor Freight bench-top model blasting cabinet, what a piece of crap that thing is. Leaks, media doesn't like to move down because the sides aren't steep enough. You have to bang it around every so often which helps to break any re-sealing you have done etc. 
Have to use shop vac so you can even see, if you don't run some type of screen or filter on the vac hose all your media ends up in your shop vac. No lights so I had run a trouble light in there which would barely let you see etc etc etc. So I have been keeping my eyes open for a deal on a better system. A few weeks ago a small industrial type system with built in dust collection showed up at a local online auction. At least one other person saw the potential that I did so I ended up paying more than I really liked. It was one of those 'soft close' deals designed to drive the price up as high as possible. I had given it a cursory inspection so I knew it needed a few things, the door latch was broken, something had dinged in the the top cover on the dust collection motor so the cooling fan was dragging which prevented me from spinning it to check the bearings, the gloves were shot, I think there was a mouse nest in one of them. It had obviously been sitting outside for some time and had quite the 'patina'. The pluses were this thing was built to last and came with lights and dust collection. It was not much bigger than my HF unit but deeper and my shop is kind of small anyway. I figured if size became a real problem I would always weld on an extension.
Here is how it looked when I got it home:
I started stripping it down and opened up the dust collection portion. Fortunately the bags are perfectly functional.
I had toyed with the idea of simply sanding it down and shooting a clear coat over the patina like they do with some old cars but I figured for tools that probably isn't so 'cool' if I ever needed to sell it. I also inquired about having it, ironically enough, sand blasted. At the same time I was figuring out what was missing, broken, in need of replacement etc. The latch is a $130 or so deal. So I decided to no sandblast it ($100-150 to get it done) and put that money into parts instead. I didn't want to end up with used equipment at near new prices I hadn't realized part of the blasting gun was missing so a new gun is in order and adds to the costs.
After MUCH wire brushing, priming, sanding, painting etc. I got it to an acceptable finish. In some places it was rust pitted pretty bad, especially the bottom runners as it had sat on the ground for sometime and they were badly pitted. I wire brushed the crap out of those areas and used Rustoleum Rusty Metal primer on the whole thing so hopefully that stops any problems. It needed a little bit of welding, at some point someone added a piece to the bottom of the doorway but barely did much welding (you can see their welds on the outside) I took the mig to it and along the inside seam, welded it completely in. Also took a bit of tweaking to get it all straight after welding it in and had to grind some of their welds but got it so it closed flat all the way around.
The dust collection motor needed new bearings. The upper one was totally shot, probably from water intrusion while sitting in the rain, and the lower one was a bit sticky so $22 later I had new bearings installed. I used my HF sand blaster to clean up the end caps and parts of the motor that could some off, the body itself I sanded. The paint job on the motor came out very nice, it did not have any pitting at all which helped a lot.
The lights are either pot metal or aluminum. I wire brushed those out and they came out nice. Wire brush was also applied to the electrical parts which took off the outer gunk but left the patina. I rewired it will new wiring and put some light bulbs in it.
And eventually moved it to where I will be using it in the shop.
You can see the corrosion the inside, I scraped out what I could the rest is pretty well attached. It had sat with sand in it for who knows how long and I think it held moisture for quite some time. Getting the cap off the bottom to dump the sand eventually required the use of a torch for heating and judicious use of a big pipe wrench and big hammer. I figured that will come off as soon as I use it or maybe it will be the first use for it
Right now I am awaiting a few parts. I found the latch New Old Stock on Ebay for $30 vice the $130 it would have cost (guess I could have afforded that sandblasting after all). I got a new piece of glass for $7 but there is a fine mesh screen in front of the glass which I finally found at McMaster Carr... or at least I hope it is the right screen. The old one was so rusted it was hard to measure the hole size. I bought all the wrong size pipe fittings for hooking up air at HomeDepot yesterday so I have to return those and get the right size. The gloves use a small hole size, 6" but as I was looking at McMaster Carr they had that size so I ordered them as well. For now I am just going to use the gun out of my HF cabinet to get a feel for what I want.
I also still need to wire brush down and paint the panel for the dust collection compartment and the drawer that goes at the bottom to recover media.
Have to use shop vac so you can even see, if you don't run some type of screen or filter on the vac hose all your media ends up in your shop vac. No lights so I had run a trouble light in there which would barely let you see etc etc etc. So I have been keeping my eyes open for a deal on a better system. A few weeks ago a small industrial type system with built in dust collection showed up at a local online auction. At least one other person saw the potential that I did so I ended up paying more than I really liked. It was one of those 'soft close' deals designed to drive the price up as high as possible. I had given it a cursory inspection so I knew it needed a few things, the door latch was broken, something had dinged in the the top cover on the dust collection motor so the cooling fan was dragging which prevented me from spinning it to check the bearings, the gloves were shot, I think there was a mouse nest in one of them. It had obviously been sitting outside for some time and had quite the 'patina'. The pluses were this thing was built to last and came with lights and dust collection. It was not much bigger than my HF unit but deeper and my shop is kind of small anyway. I figured if size became a real problem I would always weld on an extension.Here is how it looked when I got it home:
I started stripping it down and opened up the dust collection portion. Fortunately the bags are perfectly functional.
I had toyed with the idea of simply sanding it down and shooting a clear coat over the patina like they do with some old cars but I figured for tools that probably isn't so 'cool' if I ever needed to sell it. I also inquired about having it, ironically enough, sand blasted. At the same time I was figuring out what was missing, broken, in need of replacement etc. The latch is a $130 or so deal. So I decided to no sandblast it ($100-150 to get it done) and put that money into parts instead. I didn't want to end up with used equipment at near new prices
I hadn't realized part of the blasting gun was missing so a new gun is in order and adds to the costs.After MUCH wire brushing, priming, sanding, painting etc. I got it to an acceptable finish. In some places it was rust pitted pretty bad, especially the bottom runners as it had sat on the ground for sometime and they were badly pitted. I wire brushed the crap out of those areas and used Rustoleum Rusty Metal primer on the whole thing so hopefully that stops any problems. It needed a little bit of welding, at some point someone added a piece to the bottom of the doorway but barely did much welding (you can see their welds on the outside) I took the mig to it and along the inside seam, welded it completely in. Also took a bit of tweaking to get it all straight after welding it in and had to grind some of their welds but got it so it closed flat all the way around.
The dust collection motor needed new bearings. The upper one was totally shot, probably from water intrusion while sitting in the rain, and the lower one was a bit sticky so $22 later I had new bearings installed. I used my HF sand blaster to clean up the end caps and parts of the motor that could some off, the body itself I sanded. The paint job on the motor came out very nice, it did not have any pitting at all which helped a lot.
The lights are either pot metal or aluminum. I wire brushed those out and they came out nice. Wire brush was also applied to the electrical parts which took off the outer gunk but left the patina. I rewired it will new wiring and put some light bulbs in it.
And eventually moved it to where I will be using it in the shop.
You can see the corrosion the inside, I scraped out what I could the rest is pretty well attached. It had sat with sand in it for who knows how long and I think it held moisture for quite some time. Getting the cap off the bottom to dump the sand eventually required the use of a torch for heating and judicious use of a big pipe wrench and big hammer. I figured that will come off as soon as I use it or maybe it will be the first use for it
Right now I am awaiting a few parts. I found the latch New Old Stock on Ebay for $30 vice the $130 it would have cost (guess I could have afforded that sandblasting after all). I got a new piece of glass for $7 but there is a fine mesh screen in front of the glass which I finally found at McMaster Carr... or at least I hope it is the right screen. The old one was so rusted it was hard to measure the hole size. I bought all the wrong size pipe fittings for hooking up air at HomeDepot yesterday so I have to return those and get the right size. The gloves use a small hole size, 6" but as I was looking at McMaster Carr they had that size so I ordered them as well. For now I am just going to use the gun out of my HF cabinet to get a feel for what I want.
I also still need to wire brush down and paint the panel for the dust collection compartment and the drawer that goes at the bottom to recover media.
