This afternoon we broke out a new toy that I borrowed from my dad last weekend, a pressure feed sandblaster. As usual, Jeff and I had no clue what we were doing to start with but we learned as we went along.

Here's Jeff dumping sand into the sandblaster.

I was surprised to see that my 4 hp. Craftsman compressor had no difficulty powering this unit. The sandblaster was new and unused until this afternoon. We christened it by attacking the pair of aluminum brake drums I got for the front of the car. Here's the before picture:

We started out with a fairly simple setup: large blue tarp with a sheet of plywood on top of two five gallon cans.

We quickly started dragging more stuff out of the barn: a stool, a sheet of cardboard so that we didn't completely sandblast our shins, some work gloves. Eventually, we made a backdrop by putting a sawhorse on our makeshift table and using a couple of bar clamps to pull the tarp up as a backdrop.

We used white sand for blast. My three older kids, Jake, Allison and Seth all had a turn sandblasting.

We also started dragging out all manner of parts. We did about twenty or so bumper bolts (I have some extras), the brackets for my front bumper, and one of my five unrestored Motor Wheel Spyders.

This is how the bumper brackets turned out:

The brackets got black paint (obviously), while we clearcoated the bolts.

Here's a shot of one of the brake drums:

And one of the drum and the rim (one of the four that have already been cleaned up) as they will look when mounted on the car:

After we got tired of being pelted with sand, we put the front bumper on the car. It looks so much better than the bent and scratched unit that has lived there for the last seventeen years. I also played with the buffer again, polishing up the nipple that comes out of the fuel pump and the brass tee it goes into. Those also received high temp clear coat.

After that, we called it a night.

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All images and text copyright Norman C. Witte 2002.