Sand blasting tech

Ever have one of those **** retentive moments after you tore down a motor and upon putting it back togeather looked at all the hardware and wished it was clean. Sure get the solvents and dissolve the crud. Better yet got to the wire wheel, screw that I eat my hands even through the glove enough. Blast them, but all the little parts fall through the grate and the sifting , the bulky gloves.

Yes if you can blast them, and they look cool too. Gl*** if you've got it so as not to destroy the threads. For bolts I take the ammount of a group of hardware and just like teporarily plugging a fuel line or vaccuum hose, place the group one by one into the ends of the hose. Make the hoses six inches or so long and a group of ten or whatever. Opposite of the end the bolts are in zip tie or tape the ends togeather so you have a group to deal with. At least you wont loose them in the blasting media and easier to handle with the gloves.

Or just throw them in a mag tray on the grate and work close to the tray so if they fall they land back into the tray. For washers and nuts I use a three inch three ring binder. I took the metal part out with the rings and open it, place my materials on it, lock it back down, the blast it. The rings allow you to keep some of the items seperate from others if you need, doesn't come undone and is big enough to handle with the gloves.

Kind of useless and usefull, but make the hardware look killer.

 

where i work, when we blast small parts, we have a few different wire baskets, some have larger holes, these are knick knack baskets available at stores like Target, or for smaller mesh, we use wire kitchen strainers with a handle on them. we wire two together so they are hinged opposite the handle, you throw the parts inside, close the strainers, and agitate as you blast.

 

No Politics.

 

Edit: NO POLITICS PLEASE
Now back to the post. I use duck tape flipped at the ends to a sheet metal strip. After endless searching to find a way to clean this small stuff easily I gave up, I even made a tumbler out of some old parts and used MEK as a cleaner, this worked BUT its extremely toxic and flamable. Electric motor + explosive fumes = BOOOM ,not to mention the cancer risk. So I s****ped the idea. I should mention this was back when i was in my early 20's, many beers ago B4 I knew all the dangers of chemicals.Hell, back then company's were still dumping that **** on the ground.