Stubborn Paint

[wayjon0]

I started sand blasting this weekend and it isn't going very well. I have the 110lbs harbor freight special and I started off trying 1/2 80 grit glass beads and 1/2 course walnut shells this is what was recommended by the abrasion company. Well the first bump in the road was the walnut shells wouldn't go through the largest orifice, so I tried 100% 80 grit glass beads and it does well with rust and single layers of paint. It won't even make a dent in the four plus layers of paint on most of the car.

So now I'm kind of stuck, I've played with the air media mix and I'm running about 65 PSI (again the PSI was recommended by the abrasion company)

 

[monkeystash]

I went through the same issues. Try using aluminum oxide media. It's much more abrasive than glass or shells, however your chance for warping increases too, but I never had any issues.

 

[lethal289]

PSI isn't as much of an issue as the CFM. Is your air compressor big enough to handle the load?

I agree with Ryan, change the abrasive. i used this stuff

Even the finest abrasive seemed to cut right through anything.

 

[B67FSTB]

armex soda blasting ????

 

[Tony R]

I used playground sand in my HF blaster. One thing you can try is a razor knife paint scraper. I removed alot of my paint on the flatter panels prior to blasting. It doesn't remove the primer but it takes most of the paint off.

 

[wayjon0]

CFM isn't an issue i have a about the highest cfm you can get on single phase. I run a ingersoll rand 17 cfm 60 gal compressor. I'll see if I can find a local dist for that BB product.

Tony, did you have any issue with heat using play ground sand?

 

[Tony R]

none that I can tell.

 

[buckeyedemon]

the play sand i've seen was always wet, inconsistent and full of gravel.

use aircraft stripper to strip the external panels. save the media for spots with rust and ensure you keep the tip a fair distance away. or just use something like naval jelly on the rust spots (assuming we are talking external panels.

for the jambs and channels clean it up using the blaster.

i'm assuming you have just a shell?

 

[Tony R]

the play sand i've seen was always wet, inconsistent and full of gravel.

use aircraft stripper to strip the external panels. save the media for spots with rust and ensure you keep the tip a fair distance away. or just use something like naval jelly on the rust spots (assuming we are talking external panels.

for the jambs and channels clean it up using the blaster.

i'm assuming you have just a shell?

I bought bags of sand at lows with no lumps and no moisture. I attempted to use the stripper on my car but with all the layers of paint it was taking too long. I used the scraper to remove the majority of the paint which didn't take that long and then used the blaster for the rest. I'm not saying that the stripper doesn't work it was just way to slow with that many layers of paint.