Sandblast Booth

[joe crumley]

Howdy Folks,

I'm hoping someone has made a large, big, huge, Sand Blast booth and will allow me to steal some of their idea's.

Back in the 80's Mike had a dedicated sandblast room, which was handy because he wasn't held up by bad weather. Still, this requires suiting up, getting cool fresh safe air supply, and isn't that comfortable either. While this is better than what we're doing , which is outside. I would like to have a large booth which I could put my arms in and still move back and forth and have some vertical movement.

Ever so often we do a 10' panel, so this would probably be the outside limit. The booth would need to be about 14' long. I've figured out how to make a moveable, gloved horizontal panel, and vacuum pickup to dispose of the dust, but haven't got all the details down. Kind of a Rube Goldberg set up.

We have an Ingersol Rand twin screw hooked up to a 300 lb Empire pot right now, that is hooked to a vacuum sut off which is termed a "Dead Man". I love the term. Still it takes more time to suit up, drag all the n outside, tote the sand, and hook up, than it takes to sandblast a 3'X8' panel. We try to do several at a time but sure enough there is one that comes in by itself. Mike's room was much faster that what we are doing now but still......


After years of training other sandblast companies to do my sandblasting, and lots of waiting, un predictable pricing, and plain unsatisfactory work, we are still doing our own. I envy you guys who have a good sandblast vendor.

Also we have our own hand made grain frame which is an art in itself. Knowing when and where to move it around is a creative process. I'ts a 3'X8' frame.

Joe

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Joe,
We had a friend, Jim Blackwell, in the southern part of Oklahoma City that was in the Ruff-Cote business. They sandblasted oil field pipe and then applied epoxy and a layer of chipped flint, sort of like doing smalts. We would take our signs to him whenever possible and he knew how to blast them the way we wanted them. His price was always fair and the quality was great.

We built that 8x8x12 room, with a vented door, then had to install a squirrel cage type exhaust to pull the floating redwood particles out of the room. The motor was on the outside of the squirrel cage to keep it out of the dust and supposedly keep it from being involved with some sort of static charge explosion. For a while, tried recycling the sand, but between the fractured sand and the build up of redwood dust, we eventually returned to new sand each time. Every few months, we had to haul it off or let people come get all they wanted for gardens, and landscaping, etc. I looked into a unit that would pump the sand out of the room into the back of a truck bed, but never bought it. The set up was generally convenient, but still a bit of a pain. I would only blast in my booth if Jim was busy or out of town.

When we were up here, I bought the largest Glass-Passer unit, hoping to blast wood in it. We had to have the box retrofitted some to give us more room. It generally worked fine, but we still had a lot of problems exhausting enough of the free floating debris. We bought the large filter, but it couldn't really keep up, so we exhausted it outside a few times. Without going through the filter bags, it worked better, but wasn't really a good solution. We also opted to use the plastic media, which cuts very fast and is reuseable, but expensive.

At the time we sold the shop, and for months prior, we had switched gears and had opted not to sell sandblasted signs if possible and were taking advantage of our router. When moved to Jackson Hole, we located our shop outside the core edge of town along the highway. Over the years, growth brought more people, houses, and businesses. We always assumed it was only a matter of time before someone complained about the noise and dust. We then decided to let the router cut away the background, then went around the edges of everthing about 3/32" deeper with a round tipped bit. Then we lightly chipped the surface with a shallow gouge. The face of the letters could still be prismatic, while in the router. The hand work was cut down and the router was allowed to do what it does to make money. We would have been even more efficient with one of the 4x8 or 4x10 routers everyone has now.

Quite a few signs were designed to have a small signfoam overlay panel either in the center crest or on the ends. We could blast the small panels easily and quickly in the small booth.

I looked into the large booths, but they were always terribly expensive. Like you, I never saw an affordable solution. Noel Weber does his glass blasting in an old trailer, retrofitted with exhausts and so forth. He only uses aluminum oxide there, and no wood or foam ever. I probably snapped a photo one time, but no telling where it is.

When we sold the shop ten years ago, we explained our direction, but the owners has since dropped back to blasting signs in redwood and foam.

Hope some of this info helps.