In my youth (25-30 years back) when I used to avidly read Practical Classics, I distinctly remember a handheld bead blaster designed to blast smallish areas of bodywork (0.5" dia?). It had a sort of rubber surround that was held up against the offending area and it blasted all the rust/whatever away. The beads/grit were lost. I seem to think that it was self contained i.e. not requiring a compressor, and it wasn't terribly expensive. It's the sort of thing that Gunson would have made. Does anyone know whether such a tool still exists and if so where I could get one from? If not does anyone remember said tool and what it was called (or even have one kicking around in their garage)?
Sealey were doing a special offer on their kit recently. It was about 19 quid and may still be. I know, because I'd just bought one off eBay then realised I could have got it locally and saved 4 quid. Haven't tried it yet.
Probably a good thing, considering that there are many types of 'grit' available depending on what needs cleaning - by not including the grit it will actually make the user think about what the correct grit is for the job, hopefully!
Errm, I may be missing something here, but after checking the Frost website and website selling Sealey tools, neither of their spotblast guns came with abrasives either. Since there's a wide choice of abrasive, I'm not sure that getting a smidge of something that you may not want would be that useful.
Well I rather liked the idea of getting everything I needed in one box so that I could try the thing out without having to search around for abrasives. But since I've had it for a month or two and haven't actually got around to trying it yet, you may have a point.
Thanks for all your replies: very helpful. This Sealey one looks the business but I'll have to get a small compressor as well. Any recommendations, or is that pushing my luck too far?
Yes, but what else, I doubt anyone would buy a compressor/tank for just one air tool (other than air brushing spray guns), why would anyone struggle when they could have access to air hacksaws, air powered air ratchets etc.
Air tools... like Jerry says, you're opening up a whole new can of worms!
I initially bought a Clarke Tiger 25 from Machine Mart, intending to use it for paint spraying. That got nicked, so with the insurance money I bought a Tiger 35. Now neither compressor has quite enough ooomph for spraying, but it will manage. A colleague gave me a second Tiger 35, which I connected in parallel with the first to effectively double the tank capacity. It works, well enough that I still run them like that.
Next I bought an air tool kit (SIP) and discovered how useful they can be. I also discovered how much air it takes to feed some of them! Things like die grinders and orbital sanders _really_ use a high feed rate. As I now sensibly use an air-fed mask for spraying too, I bought the biggest compressor I could use at home, which is a 200 litre Sealey SA1020/3 with a 3HP motor. This does the spraying and the "thirsty" tools, while the pair of Tigers are housed outside the garage and supply my air-fed mask and any secondary tools.
Basically there are 4 figures to rate a compressor with. There is the maximum pressure, which is of little real use. There is the tank capacity - this is important because you can run your tools longer before the motor has to kick in. Buy the biggest you can afford & accomodate. Then there is the amount of air it can supply per minute - the most important for many tools. Here you will find two figures, the free air displacement, which is the amount of air it actually shifts, and the free air delilvery, which is the amount it can actually deliver continuously. My Sealey shifts 14 cubic feet/minute, but can only actually deliver 10.6 cfm (well on spec at least, it's fitted with a non-original compressor unit). The Tigers are rated at about half that. You'll be lucky to get much over 15 cfm on single phase anyway.
I haven't used one of these, so I can't directly recommend it, but on paper Machine Mart's Clarke Hunter 60 looks very good value - 12.5 cfm displacement, 50 litre tank, at just under £212 (compared with a rrp of around £700 for my Sealey!)
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