Paint prep

[Jim Eh.]

I found a neat little tool to make prepping for paint a ton easier. It is a spot blaster, which is a siphon (or gravity feed) hand held sand blaster with an assortment of rubber boots. One of which is a round one that works great for removing loose/peeled paint from around rivets, duzs fastners, and the dreaded mono bolts. The edge of the sand blasted area around the rivet could use feathering but I always say ... nobody will never see it at 60 mph. I would much rather have a small line in the paint around the rivet than to have the new paint bubble and peel around the rivets in a year of so.

[Oonrahnjay]

I found a neat little tool to make prepping for paint a ton easier. It is a spot blaster  ... 

    Oh, yeah, I see that being useful LOTS of places.  Thanks for this.  Do you have a URL with info on specs, where to buy, etc.?

[Jim Eh.]

In Canada, Princess Auto, in the US probably Harbour Freight or most any auto parts place. I usually wait for the items I want to come on sale but my timing was out on this one so I paid around 50$. On sale I heard they were down to about 30$. Worth whatever you pay.
I just used shop air which is running at about 125 psi on a 120 gallon tank and used a chair or small ladder so the compressor could keep pace. The boot catches a lot of the blast media and dumps it into the catch bag for re-use. There is some that drops to the floor when you relocate the gun. I was reusing the media about three times then put in fresh stuff. The kit comes with a very aggressive coke media which works very well ... almost too well. I switched to a glass bead and the rivet surface was a lot smoother but it did take a bit longer to clean fully. The nice part was the I could do it inside an active shop without bothering anyone, no dust (as long as I kept the gun tight to the surface).

[Mex-Busnut]

Jim:

Awesome! How much air pressure do you need to operate this?