Harbor Freight Sand Blaster – Setup and First Use

Hey it's Brock here with Rock Hill Farms And you guys know I'm working on this Antique Hay Wagon and after I restore This I'm planning to move on to the Model A so I have a lot of rust and old Paint to deal with Now I've been planning to do that with You know wire wheels and Flap disc Sanders and whatever works the Best right Got a couple comments on a previous Video said why don't you get a Sandblaster and I've used sandblasting Cabinets but never a little portable Unit And I thought well that's probably too Expensive or too complicated so I was Going to just ignore that and then I Thought Well what if it's not so I looked it up And Harbor Freight has the central Pneumatic they have three different Media blasters That are really fairly affordable when You think about what it does and the Fact it should last you a long time so They have an either an 80 or 100 pound One they cost about twice as much as This at the time of recording it was 160 Dollars this one was around eighty Dollars for the 20 pound version seems Like they're exactly the same the only Difference is the size of the tank It doesn't put out more pressure or

Anything else like that it's just a Bigger tank which means you have to Refill it less often And then I had to buy A tub of this This is glass bead but you have to get Some kind of flask media and there's Different options for that they say Don't use actual sand but there are Different things you can get to put in Your sand blaster so let's get this Thing put together see how well it works We've got a hood here Because using any kind of a blaster you Definitely you're gonna need something a Face shield up at a minimum or a hood Keep the sand out of your eyes and off Out of your face So this is you know really cheap unit And with any unit you're gonna have to Replace these Plexiglas Shields so Hopefully they have those available I don't know if I'll use that but that's What comes with it and we've got a Funnel for putting the blast media in Got some air hose A bag of fittings Like legs for the tank Your actual tank [Music] A lid for the tank and another piece of Air hose These instructions seem to be pretty

Good so I'm going to go through them Quickly you put thread tape on all your Threads and then you screw one of these Into the tank a ball valve onto that Another one of these and then this Piece right here I don't know exactly What it's called but it mixes the air And sand basically And that's it for the bottom I was Actually thinking it didn't make sense To flip this over before putting the Legs on realize there's two sets of Instructions one for the big tank one For the little tank so first thing You're supposed to do is put these legs On and then you're supposed to assemble This the way I did So these just slide on and then there's A cotter pin Okay next we're taking a piece of Straight pipe two ball valves and Another one of their proprietary Fittings And then we've got an air Inlet on the End and we're screwing that Into the top of the tank Okay so now we have one shut off on the Horizontal and one on the vertical then We have a pressure relief valve that Screws into the top of the tank on the Back side We've got a lid that screws on the top The next step of the instructions is to Put the fittings in the bottom which I

Showed at the beginning Or you put the lid on make sure you put This big rubber o-ring on Seal the top So next we have this short hose here That screws in on the bottom right here And the top of that hose connects right Here just below That vertical ball valve All right next we attach our Blaster Hose Right here And then we just tighten that up with a Hose clamp So at the other end of the blasting hose We've got another hose clamp And another ball valve this is going to Be where you actually do your work We just have to put the tip on The tip is three pieces you've got this Piece right here Then your actual blasting nozzle that Your your blasting media comes through Those come with different orifice sizes That just slides in here And then you have a kind of a gasket That goes On top of that blasting nozzle And then this just screws on right here All right time to open this thing up and Put some blasting media in it Oh we've got one more thing it actually Doesn't come with is we have to put the Fitting on right here

For the air Chuck so we can connect our Air supply I'll get that done fill this up with Media and we'll see if this thing works I think it would have been better to cut A hole in that lid really hard to get The lid off and then it's a little too Wide for the funnel so I spilled some And that stuff's not cheap so I'd prefer Not to spill it I literally just used it and didn't have The camera on it worked pretty well but I'm gonna redo that so I've done one Strip right here I'll do another strip Right there and just see how long it Takes Foreign Thank you Okay one thing I think you would want to Know from the instructions it seems like It told me to open this valve fully This valve fully the bottom valve fully And then use this valve to control it And that's not what I saw working at all If you open that bottom valve fully Feels like you would empty your entire Tank of sand In like five minutes And it's unnecessary so I felt like you Want to open that bottom valve just Enough to let enough sand come out to do The work now this I took down to Bare Metal but it probably took me five Minutes to make this I mean this is

Completely clean this Was quick I did this in like a minute But if you look at it I mean that's not This is your bare metal that still has a Layer on it Now So I have a lot of area to cover here am I Taking it all down to this which would Be perfect Maybe not necessary if you've done a Restoration like this before how far Down are you taking that It's not a showpiece I'm still going to Use it so I've got to give that some Thought This is as smooth as you would get if You were sanding it it's removed all the Rust I want to do this I'm just thinking time Wise and the amount of sand it would Take and the amount of mess it would Take obviously I'd have to do it outside And I'd probably be spending a lot of Money on this sand material this filter Media So a lot to think about whether this is Going to be cost effective or not but if You want a sandblaster This was less than an hour of setup Cost 150 dollars for the blaster in the Media easy to use works right out of the Box

One caveat some people who have smaller Air compressors have seem to have Trouble getting enough You know um Blasting pressure I guess is the term Mine is a 60 gallon DeWalt tank Nothing industrial but a nice one I Bought it at Lowe's for like a thousand Dollars or nine hundred dollars Something like that it puts out 15 cpf Cubic feet per minute at 90 PSI And I think I need to turn the PSI down a Little bit honestly it's almost too much But It's not having any problem I think it's Perfectly fine I don't think I'm having Any restrictions causing me problem I Think it's just a matter of How much time will it take to do this Whole thing so in my next video I'm Going to do a comparison between using The sandblaster and using my wire wheels And try to determine what's probably the Most relevant for you is one of these Worth it or should you just wire wheel All this off so that'll be in the next Video but I appreciate you taking time To watch this video I'll put links on The screen to a couple more of our Videos and I'll see you next time