Harbor Freight Small Sand Blaster...

[Derek Arita]

I want to use the small hand held sand blaster from Harbor Freight to blast off the rust spots on hand planes and other tools that may have some rust on them. How well will this work and how messy is it to use?

[John C Bush]

I bought the hopper hand held unit and couldn't get it to work. Not sure if the blasting medium I had was too large for the aperture. I have a mini sand blaster(uses 50 micron medium) that is the venturi type and it works well for small areas so maybe their hand held venturi style blast gun may work better. Sand blasting is messy but is a great cathartic for OCD personalities!!

[Art Mann]

I had the same experience with the HF hand held unit that John did.

[Myk Rian]

Lay down a tarp so you can reuse the medium.
A neighbor has the bin type that you set up on a ladder. Worked well for a couple machines I restored, but it used a lot of air.

[Tom Giacomo]

Mine worked pretty good it did use a lot of air and I found using white play sand worked best, also very messy I used it outdoors only.

[Greg R Bradley]

If you don't want to make a big mess and spend a bunch on media, you will want to use a blast CABINET. Any blaster that doesn't recycle the media back into the feed like a cabinet does, will need to use media that is basically free like sand. This is too sharp for your intended use. You want to take off the rust without shredding the plane underneath and that requires media that is rounded like glass beads or softer media. These are designed to be recycled.

I have the larger HF blast cabinet at home. Like many HF items, it isn't completely functional as-is. More like pretend tool or something built by people that don't actually know how a tool works so they make something that looks like a tool but doesn't quite work. However, with a couple hours of re-engineering, it works fine. Well worth the $200 and some of your time as the real thing costs ten times that much. They have a smaller one for $100 that should be fine for your use also. They used to have an even smaller one for around $50 that would be OK for a small amount of use but I don't think they sell that anymore. The top was the view window and would get destroyed after a bit of use and people would keep returning them.

Any blaster will use a lot of air. The largest 120v compressors will only blast for a few minutes and then need to build back up some pressure to let you blast again for a few minutes. If you don't have a 100% duty cycle compressor, be careful to not kill it.

[lowell holmes]

I thought that bead blasting is the way to de-rust cast iron tools. I would be hesitant to put sand blasting on one of my planes.

[Mike Schuch]

I wouldn't want to blast my hand planes either. That is not the finish I would want on my hand planes.

Blasting is better used for removing paint and rust on something that will get a new finish put on it... and pretty quickly after blasting it.

[Keith Outten]

If your need to sandblast is on rare occasions you can build a box the size you need for the tool. Cut a piece of acrylic for the top of the box with a hole large enough to move the nozzle and you can slide the box over the tool as required. Drill a hole in the side of your box to connect your shop vac, if you clean the vac before you start you can recycle the media several times. I use glass beads to clean up old tools and various other pieces as it doesn't damage the surface of the tool it just cleans it. I should add that you will need a sand blasting pot, the HF pot works fine. Another option is to use walnut shells, they polish but don't have any serious cleaning properties.

Although I own a large blast cabinet I started creating small box blasters for pieces larger than my cabinet capacity, mostly huge glass signs that were too large for a cabinet. I created a thread in the Sign Design Forum here with pictures and details of how this system works if anyone is interested in the details.

[cody michael]

I want to use the small hand held sand blaster from Harbor Freight to blast off the rust spots on hand planes and other tools that may have some rust on them. How well will this work and how messy is it to use?

try using evaporust you can buy it from harbor frieght, auto parts stores and others, stuff is awesome. leave metal item soaking over night, next day it has no rust, I found a free pair of channel lock brand channel locks, they were so rusted you couldn't open or shut them, soaked them in evaporust for a few days they have no rust.

I post on here about a sander I cleaned up and painted, I soaked the cast iron that was quite rusty over night, spent about 2 minutes polishing with steel wool and they looked like brand new I was amazed.

[Bill White]

Are you sure that you're not using the SODA blaster? I have that one, and it works well. Uses baking soda, not sand.
Bill

[John Bomment]

I use a Paasche "Air Erasure" for small stuff,
HF has a version but I've never used that one.

I use aluminum oxide to blast with.

[Bill George]

I had the HF pot sandblaster at one time in my shop. Rolled it outside to the back yard so I did not have to breath anything or see sand on the driveway. Be aware you can really screw up your lungs, permanent damage by breathing that sand and fine sand dust. Wear a good hood, and a good face mask, and do it outside. The fine grained sand or media makes a nice finish to paint. I used it when I did metal art.

[Ted Calver]

If your need to sandblast is on rare occasions you can build a box the size you need for the tool. Cut a piece of acrylic for the top of the box with a hole large enough to move the nozzle and you can slide the box over the tool as required. Drill a hole in the side of your box to connect your shop vac, if you clean the vac before you start you can recycle the media several times. I use glass beads to clean up old tools and various other pieces as it doesn't damage the surface of the tool it just cleans it. I should add that you will need a sand blasting pot, the HF pot works fine. Another option is to use walnut shells, they polish but don't have any serious cleaning properties.

Although I own a large blast cabinet I started creating small box blasters for pieces larger than my cabinet capacity, mostly huge glass signs that were to large for a cabinet. I created a thread in the Sign Design Forum here with pictures and details of how this system works if anyone is interested in the details.
Keith,
Are you hooking your shop vac directly, or using a dust deputy type set up. I am wondering if the blast media is bad for the vac innards??

[Keith Outten]

Ted,

Yes, the shop vac connects directly to the side of the box. To the best of my knowledge there has never been any damage to the vac since its just glass dust that is very fine. The filter protects the vac internals the same way it works on any other medium.

Here is the link to the thread I created for the glass donor signs we did at the CNU Ferguson Center For The Arts. There are a few pictures that show how this technique works. Art Edwards and I took turns sand blasting the letters though the mask using the small box. There were five of these large glass panels so we spent a lot of time on this project, we probably used a fifty pound bag of glass beads and cycled the media several times through the shop vac before changing the beads.

I recently used the same box to blast a small glass sign, I was to lazy to move my blast cabinet to my shop for one small job.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?191775-Cheap-Way-to-Sand-Blast-Large-Glass&highlight=ferguson+center

[Ted Calver]

Thanks Keith. I'll give it a try next time. Seems like a great way to recycle media.