Sand Blasting Learnings

Charlie and I built this sand blasting booth. It is one of those nice to have tools. Having some of these types of tools just makes things go faster. When I am looking at a car at the swap meet I am only looking at the car not the lettering. It should really be called a baking soda blasting booth as that is the medium I use most of the time. I have a couple of air erasers. One is from Badger and the other is a cheap one from the hardware store. This booth was easy to build costing approximately $60  and the erasers are easy to use. There are some safety things you should know. 

We bought a plastic wash tub at Home Hardware. It had an open top, with a drain on the bottom. Holes were cut for hand holes, another hole for the air line to come through on the left and another opening on the right to be used for hooking up a vacuum. In the end the vacuum one never gets used as the dust would be hard on the vacuum bearings. There is also a top that was cut from clear sheet acrylic which was cut to size. I cut the hand holes with a jig saw and  glued 4" PVC tube in the holes. There was enough sticking out on the inside to clamp the gloves to. There was a cap put on the drain on the bottom which can be removed to clean out the tub and retrieve the medium.  The legs on the tub are easily removable by design to make it easier to store if needed.

Every thing stores inside.

A look inside without the top on.

Here you can see how the gloves are clamped on.

This shows the cap on the bottom drain

As I said above I use baking soda most of the time. This works well enough that sand has not been really necessary. If you are going to use sand or aluminum oxide you have to be more careful as it can cause respiratory issues. The baking soda is also easier is on the parts of the eraser. In the picture below I will show some things that I have used it on. You will notice that you can just remove old decaling with no need for solvents. The underlying paint will not have to be removed and will look really flat. This makes repainting the model very simple. There may be times when cleaning brass you may need to use aluminum oxide but you must be careful not to pit the brass.
When using this booth I do have to stop at times to let the dust settle and take the plastic top off and clean it. When using the eraser the baking soda is prone to setting up in the container so you use smaller amounts at a time and shake it to keep it fluid so it flows up the straw to the eraser.
The baking soda method can also be used to weather or dull down a model if you are careful.

Here is the decorated Intermountain car before

Here is the car with most of the decals removed. This took about 15-20min

Here is the repainted car.

Walthers Airslide hopper car

Here is the repainted car