Sandblasting...Good for the Soul And Not Bad For Rust Removal Either

Well Gray Ghost fans, yesterday I got to do what I've been dreaming about doing lo these many years. Sandblast rust from the Gray Ghost!  But before I got started blasting, I wanted to do some mods to my Harbor Freight blast cabinet.  There are tons of mods that people have done on Youtube, but the one that really got my attention was adding the wheels to the cabinet, so you can roll it around the shop.  I did it just like the video and it turned out like this:

How slick is that?  The wheels also came from Harbor Freight.  I used 5/8" allthread  with 8 washers and 8 nuts to hold it all together.  To get the height that I needed , I set the 2 legs onto 1-by stock, which raised them up just enough that the wheels can rotate, but not so much that the cabinet is noticeably leaning to 1 side.

The next mod didn't work out quite like I wanted....  That mod was to add dust removal from inside the cabinet to improve visibility while I was blasting.  I made an attempt at making my own dust separator using a 5 gallon bucket and a shopvac.  The idea is to create a vortex separator in the bucket to trap the debris and dust so that essentially clean air goes to the shopvac and keeps the filter from getting clogged up.  My setup looked like this:

The hose connects to the port that is built into the blast cabinet and runs to the 5 gallon bucket. Hmmm, it just occurred to me, while looking at the pics, that I did it exactly backwards!!!  Holy crap! The hose from the cabinet is supposed to run to the port on the side of the bucket.  The port is supposed to be angled to cause the air to flow around the sides of the bucket which causes the debris to fall out and not get sucked into the shopvac.  Well, ain't that a kick in the pants!  I'll have to remember to switch that around next time out!  Definitely staying true to my goal of the good, bad and ugly.  I think we can all agree that was ugly.  So, on to the good!

With that beast of a compressor, that blast cabinet really cuts through the crud!  As my test subjects, I used the panel covers from both doors.  These covers are at the bottom of each door and were really gnarly.  Here is the passenger side door panel cover (front and back) before blasting:

Pretty rough shape.  Rust, layers of old paint, the ever present primer that the previous owner sprayed on everything....  So how is a blast cabinet going to cut through that?  With aluminum oxide grit, that's how!  Here are the after blasting shots:

The dark discoloration in the pics is the mineral spirits that hadn't evaporated before I took the pics. After blasting, they got a good wipe down with mineral spirits to remove any dust or grit that might have remained on them.  From here, it was straight to primer.  It looked like this:

The panel is suspended from a rod between 2 lawn chairs by some old fishing line.  Made for perfect paint application, sort of.  It was a bit breezy out, so I had to spray in between gusts of wind, but it worked out pretty good.  After the primer, it was straight to color.  It looked like this:

This is the same dark bronze color that the cab interior and doors were painted.  I used new, stainless steel screws to reattach the panel to the door.  I had thought about regular screws that were painted, but decided to accentuate the connection with shiny stainless steel screws.  No pic of that, yet, as I was short of time then.  I'll make sure to get a shot of it when I get the interior finished up.  That's a ways off.

What a time saving tool the blast cabinet turned out to be.  Yes, I could have used sand paper, a wire brush or a grinder, but this really is the right tool for this job.

Why is sandblasting good for the soul you might ask?  Easy.  Watching all of the layers of paint and rust just evaporate was like watching all of my cares at work go away with the rust.  Instant gratification.  A dream that came to fruition, exactly as I had hoped that it would.  Promise, that I can finish the restoration work on this truck and that it will be something that I can be proud of. Not bad for 1 little blast cabinet and a beast of a compressor.