THSCC Forums

Yup, I agree with Frank on this one...

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art ... ekey=13436

but it does look like this is due to long term exposure. That said, still prudent to wear a filter if you use sand. I say right now to use a filter mask no matter what media you blast with unless you have a good cabinet.



So Bernie, where you located? I'd like to see how you built your cabinet. Thanks for offering the boxes for us rookie blasters!!

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Please Chuck, I seriously hope that I don't come across as ignorant as you appear to think I am. A 50 cent dust mask is all that is required to come between a person and silicosis.

Aside from a natural blasting product like walnut shells or sodium bicarbonate, do you really think any blasting media is going to be healthy? I betcha both of those can cause acute problems as well!

Playground sand (gee, it's safe enough for Meghan's sand box, and millions of others) isn't any more dangerous than glass bead media (hey. there's an off-the shelf product dedicated to blasting, and it's actually already in fine powder form).

Never mind the fact that doing this in the yard means I get to stay up wind of the work piece and avoid the find airborn dust.

I've already inhaled more silica than I cared to have done; Scott's probably in the same boat. But it's not due to media blasting.

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

My 2 cents...

I don't trust cheap air masks only because they seal very poorly around my nose. All I have to do is blow my nose or look at the dust traces where it went past the mask to see that (I am talking drywall here which is a fine, but easy to spot dust). But these masks are better than nothing. I think you should step up and get some that have rubber seals around the edge.

Playground sand (as well as others types of media) will be more agressive than you may need for some things as it will etch and heat (warp) the metal you are blasting. Basically just use the right media for any job and no one media works well for everything.

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

Occupational long term exposure means just that, five days a week over a peroid of years. Not sand blasting a set of wheels etc. once a year. yes wear a mask use a cabinet. If your paranoid, wear the hoods, masks, filter respirators, and any other safety gear you can think of. But don't go to the beach on a windy day cause you'll inhale more silica there than with a cabinet and no mask sand blasting. you'll also find that a good air supplied hood will cost you more than the sand blaster!!!
So Rodney if your willing to take the risk I live at 7802 Ball road, Bahama NC. You can google, or mapquest that. Get on Duke street in Durham head north just as if you were going to Vir ( Duke street turns into 501).
At the Little river community center there is a stop light, turn right, at the first road turn left. You'll go down a hill, then across a small bridge, third driveway on the right. Call 919 471 3118

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2004 C5(415whp,390ft/lbs),
1997C5,1997Trans Am, 1986 C4,
1990 Miata, 1976 MGB,1997 Protege, 1989 MR2

You mean like wet flash chromatography using silica gel in a fume hood that doesn't have the appropriate CFM draw? Yeah ...

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

Well, I think we have this sand blaster thing under control. Bernie, I haven't forgotten about you, still plan on coming by. I'll PM you to set up a time.

On to the paint gun. I found a set of guns at Lowes that has a large and small paint gun for about $59. Looks like a good deal, but here's my question. Both of these guns are syphon style guns with the tank on the bottom of the sprayer and all the upper retail guns are gravity feed. When you watch the car shows, they all seem to use the gravity feed. Is one better than the other? Would it matter for an amateur? Pro's, con's?

I'm also looking for some feedback on how to paint. Where's a good source to buy this stuff local? I'm interested in good automotive paint and supplies.

let me know please....

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

I have seen some of Bob Kendrick's work with a gun similar to the one you are looking at. I believe his is a little more upmarket. He has been shooting a two part paint by PPG. When he bought the first round of 1 gallon of Gaurds red, reducer, catalyst, and clean up solvent the bill came to $900. All of it is glass smooth thanks to very fine sandpaper and buffing.

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George Bright Member # 141
One of the youngest of the old farts.
Yes I voted against you joining the club.

Rodney, there are 3 major types of guns available: 1. HP or conventional, this is the old traditional gun that uses air in the 40-75# at the gun. This type (most of the really cheap guns are this type) requires a compressor that can put out a high volume of air at high pressure (100-150# at the compressor) with a large volume storage tank, or you'll spend most of your time waiting for the compressor to catch up if doing more than touch up. These guns also will likely burn out a compressor not rated at 100% duty and/or produce a lot of water in the line requiring a high capacity drier or chiller unit to not get water spitting out of the gun into your fresh paint. Minimum compressor for a full paint job would be a two stage one rated at 100% duty and at least 5 HP running, with 80 gal tank. This type gun is also very wasteful of paint with 50-75% ending up in the air as overspray not on the vehicle. The conventional gun is illegal for pro painters to use today, but still sold to hobbyist/DIY for small not too fussy work such as painting lawn furniture or kids toys because they are cheap. No major brands produce conventional guns today.
2) High Volume Low Pressure (HVLP) guns. This is the gun of choice for pros (and by law) today. It uses a large volume of air at low pressure as the name states. It still requires a compressor of larger capacity and pressure like the conventional gun to provide the volume of air needed or a dedicated HVLP turbine compressor (actually an oversized vaccuum cleaner blower). The turbines are nice if you need portability most are light enough to be slung over the shoulder and carried around while painting to reduce the hose length ( about the size of a vaccuum cleaner hose) and plug into a std 115V outlet, but they can be pricey. The beauty of a HVLP gun is 70-80%+ of the paint ends up on the vehicle reducing paint cost considerably, no small matter with decent single stage (1K) paint costing >100./gal and 2K base coat/clearcoat 2-4X more. (And trust me you DO want to use 2K paint on a vehicle!)
3) Reduced Pressure (RP guns) This is the latest and greatest system! Uses low pressure and lower volume at the gun. These guns can be used with a 3HP compressor, yet produce better results than the HVLP gun. What's the downside? Cost! as usual the latest is usually the most expensive with Sharpe's (excellent, but value priced) Razor selling for 2- 250. and the top of the line benchmark Sata RP going for 4-450. street price. Not out of the range for a serious car hobbyist, until you find out you need two (or more preferably 3) separate guns to spray 2K. You might get away with using the same gun for primer and color with fanatical cleaning (and a set of needles and nozzles the correct size for each paint) between if spraying darker colors, but you definitely want a dedicated gun for the clearcoat. Even a trace of color into the clear will ruin the paint job! (see cost of paint above for why you don't want to do many repaints)
Since each paint requires a different size needle and nozzle and complete disassembly to clean, you want a name brand gun with easy access to parts. There is no such thing today as a universal gun, unless you are painting the aforementioned lawn furniture.
Siphon feed guns (cup on the bottom) and/or no name overseas knock offs without easy dependable spare parts availability fall into the lawn furniture category as well IMHO.
Don't get too discouraged yet! If you are painting one panel at a time or have the compressor/dry air capacity for full paintjobs, you can buy a quality DeVillbiss 2 full size gun kit with 1.8 and 1.3 nozzles HVLP gravity feed for <150.00 that will produce a quality paint job. Add another gun with 1.3 or 1.2 nozzle if painting light colors and you are still under the price of one RP gun.
If you have any other questions give me a shout.

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

Rodney, look at the H&T for Sherwin Williams Automotive Paint supply near 440 and Capital. I just picked up a small quantity of blue pearl to do some trim pieces on my new project car. What I learned in my trip there is that really good paint can be really expensive, but reasonable quality paint isn't all that bad. For <$20 I picked up a pint of paint and a half pint of reducer, plus some cups, funnels, mixers etc.... Since this was just trim, we opted for a single-stage paint - a base plus clear would have run almost double as I recall. The most expensive part was the hardener, which ran an additional ~$25, as the smallest can they had was a pint (only needed 1 ounce per 8 ounces of paint).

As for the gun, be sure to go HVLP. My 35gal basic DIY CH compressor was fine for the HVLP and small trim work, but I definitely wouldn't want to try pushing much more air than that. We tried the $50 gravity feed HVLP from Harbor Freight, and while it worked well enough to do the trim pieces, we never could seem to get the spray pattern working right. It was returned tonight.

In all, the paint seems to have turned out well. We didn't expect perfection given my highly less than optimal tarps-hanging-from-the-ceiling-of-a-really-dirty-garage spray booth setup, but there ended up being a bit more dirt under the paint than we expected given that we at least _tried_ a little to keep it clean. Given our setup, though, I think it turned out ok. I definitely will spend more time on the booth setup (filtered and ventilated) and cleanup for my next project though.

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

Oh, also should point out that the paint I used was supposedly the "Maaco quality" paint. The really good stuff was something like >5x more expensive - upwards of $180 a gallon just for the paint. I won't be spraying that on my first half dozen projects, that's for sure.

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

Dustin,
ina makeshift booth like that, wetting down the floor will help keep down the dust. You validated my point about not buying off or no brand spray guns, you get what you pay for, buy the best you can afford, it will be cheaper in the long run.
A good rule of thumb to save a lot of grief later is to decide on what brand and type of paint you want to use, then stick to that brand's products thru the entire process to insure compatability. I.e. don't use one brand of primer, another's sealer, hardware store brand thinner/reducer, still another's paint and yet another brand of clearcoat. Even within a brand be sure that the primer is the right one for the type top coat etc. Paint companies don't make hundreds of products just to confuse us. You may get lucky, but you may also get a paint job that never dries or peels off.

PS: the paint we have picked out for our panel truck (Dupont Hot Hues) is > 100.00 a QUART! Thank goodness for HVLP!

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

Yep, had heard about the wetting the floor trick, and would have if we 1) took the time and 2) had enough floor to wet. It's on the list for the next, bigger prject, though.


And this is why I went to SW and had them set us up with a "matched set". SW has some nifty "cheat sheets" to help you make choices on which components to use, at what pressure, for which temperature range, etc.....

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

I can't believe that I'm admitting this...I was watching Tricked Out on the DIY Network one night and he made nice temporary paint booth.

It consisted of an EZ Up, plastic paint "tarps" that were duct taped to the EZUp and also to the floor. He put some plastic on the floor. Then took a box fan and taped the tarp to it with the flow going out. Cut the opening on the intake side of the fan and placed a cold air return filter over the intake. Turning on the fan created a semi downdraft ventilation set up.

It seemed to work pretty well.

HERE is the link to what he built.

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Todd Breakey
STS 42 - 1992 Sunburst Miata
Dammit!
"You souldn't play leap frog with a porcupine. You might get hurt." - Eliza

Good idea with the tent, but along those lines I would be more inclined to set up a positive pressure environment, feeding filtered air INTO the tent, and an exhaust vent to guide most of the rest out through another set of filters. I would think this may do a better job at keeping crud off the paint, as you know incoming air is filtered, which would be better for dirty garages like mine.

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --