Master Blaster

Been trying to sort out the sandblaster. A while ago a sprayer friend of mine handed me half a dozen glass beads. "Put these in your blaster sand tank and they'll prevent the sand caking," he said. I duly put them in and forgot about them completely.

Anyway, I proceeded to dismantle the sand valve the other day in an attempt to discover what was continually blocking it and, what did I find? A bloody glass bead sat right in the middle of the valve gate, blocking it comprehensively. It fitted the gate so well that I initially thought it was part of the valve.

Emptied the sand tank and sieved the sand to extract all 6 beads, which are about 1/3rd the size of a standard marble.

Actual marbles would have been better, as they would be too large to block the gate valve.

Still keeps blocking though and I think it's the fact I'm using old media that's contaminated with extraneous substances. I follow the advice and start with the sand valve closed, opening it a bit at a time until I get the required volume of sand, but this lasts for no more than a few seconds before it blocks again, necessitating dismantling the bottom sand valve once more. Going to have to throw away the existing blast media and replace it with new.

The Sealey sand blaster needs some redesigning, if you ask me. The sand valve is at the bottom of the tank, which makes it damned difficult to regulate the amount of sand coming through while you're blasting. It could do with some form of remote control at the business end of the sand blasting pipe, or the mixing of air and sand being performed within the blasting nozzle, rather than at the bottom of the sand tank.

I'd really like to use it for sandblasting the interior of the GT6. Why spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar? It shouldn't take more than a day or blasting (and probably a couple of tonnes of sand....). I dread tackling it with a wire brush on an angle grinder - you just can't get into the crevices and there are more crevices on the inside of an object than the exterior.

The bloody sand gets everywhere - clothes, hair, ears, nose, mouth. I should wear an overall and my sand blasting mask, which looks like a bee keeper's headgear, but it huffs up and I end up not being able to see a thing. I am aware of the problem of silicosis and take a deep breath before blasting (outdoors), but the rebounding sand gets into my beard/moustache and hence into my mouth.

Sand blasting medium is damned expensive and I need to find some cheap, fine sand from somewhere. Builders' sand is quite coarse (and full of nasty things) and kids' play sand, which is indeed fine, is expensive.