Abrasive blasting for texture......?

[Doug Rasmussen]

Might be something I want to do. I see Harbor Freight has a small abrasive cabinet for under a hundred bucks. Uses lots of air as they all do, but for my smallish pieces my large tank compressor may be okay.

Any experiences with the process? Type of abrasives, etc?

 

[hockenbery]

That cabinet will get you started and may be the only one you ever need. It is big enough for most woodturnings.

If you have an 80 gallon compressor or a good 60 gallon compressor you should be able to blast continuously.

Using a 30 gallon compressor you have to stop to let the compressor recharge.
Sort of 2 minutes of blasting 90 seconds of recharging again and again. just takes longer but does the job just fine.

I suggest you use coarse ground glass as an abrasive. From what I have been able to determine it has least harmful effects of any media and it has a nice aggressiveness for wood.

I do demos on sandcarving which is a specialized use of sandblasting with resist. The sandcarving uses the textured surface to define images projected by the resist.
I use the small harbor freight table top cabinet in my demos.
You may find some useful information in my demo handout.
http://aaw2016.hockenbery.net/sandcarving.pdf

 

[Doug Rasmussen]

Wow, that handout answered questions I didn't even have.

Thanks very much.

 

[Clifton C]

I bought one, couldn't beat the price w/25% off coupon. One issue I had was a bit of abrasive leakage. I know I have other abrasive stuff in the shop, but this seemed a bit too much. I took the cabinet apart and caulked it as I put it back together, overkill I know, but sometimes that's what happens. 20/20 hindsight, I think just caulking the seams would have sufficed. Even though now contained, I still wear a respirator.

 

[Raul McCai]

Any experiences with the process? Type of abrasives, etc?

In my business we have an expression:
"Silica is the Next Asbestos."
Be careful with those abrasives.