It’s a Blast!

I have been wanting a blasting cabinet for a while now but even on sale they run in the $100-$200 range for the smaller ones and I was reluctant to pay that. So over the course of the past week I decided to just build my own on the cheap.

These are the basic materials that I used. A 27 gallon heavy duty storage bin, a pair of 4″ PCV couplers, a pair of worm clamps that fit the couplers, sheet of plexi, blasting gloves and a rubber grommet for a 3/8″ air hose.

blasting cabinet materials

 

The first thing I did was cut out a section of the container top that I wanted to use as a window.

hole cut for window

Next I cut a piece of the plexi to fit the space and laid down a good bead of silicon to seal it.  Then for good measure I threw an ample bead on top as well.

window installed

Next I marked off where the arm holes were to go.

marked holes for arms

After hacking out the circles, I put in the 4″ couplers and laid down a heavy bead on both the inside and out.

arm holes installed

After everything cured for a few days I put a hole on the lower side for air hose access with the grommet  and secured the blasting gloves to the couplers with the worm clamps.

gloves and blasting valve installed

In addition to the cabinet, for the media blaster setup I also grabbed some scrap 2×4 I had in the garage and make a little stand for filtering the air between the compressor and pressure pot.

First it goes through an air filter to remove any particles that might be floating around in stream.

air filter

Then that feeds over to the other side and goes through the oil removal filter and desiccant dryer to make sure no moisture is getting into the blasting media.

desiccant dryer and oil removal filter

Now I just need to test it out.  Chances are that even the small pressure pot blaster I have is going to tax the small 2.5HP compressor that I have.  Might be a good excuse for upgrading to a shop compressor.

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