Morris Minor Owners Club

I think i saw a mention of a clarke grit blasting gun in a post which works very well for under £20 using garnet i found going spare, but the mess is bad, so i am trying to get a cabinet for parts as the time it saves it worth it, i need something i can get at least a bare car wheel into, open to suggestions if anyone has ideas.

ian.mcdougall wrote:I used the electrolytic setup to de-rust some lathe parts, it works but for heavy rust it may have to be wire brushed and dunked again the sacrificial piece of steel that the rust attaches to looks disgusting and the electrolite gets murky, bought my kits through Frost, came with all to set up and go.Restricted to the size of the bucket, so not very large pieces can be done.

not sure what FROST sell but a diy electrolytic kit a DIY process involves mixing soda crystals in water, a battery charger and a piece of sacrificial metal. Attach the positive side of the charger to your sacrificial piece of metal and the negative side to the piece of metal you wish to clean up. Do not do it in a confined space and make sure the two pieces of metal do not touch. When you attach the electrodes you should see bubbles rising from the piece of metal being cleaned. The process is not quick but i find stopping and brushing the "rubbish" off the metal every hour or so seems to speed up the process. whilst it is not quick it does allow you to get on with other things at the same time and is good on small fiddly bits.

I have a small Clarks cabinet at home (Like the one pictured above) and a Clarks 3HP compressor. It made more sense than buying a plug cleaner, as I can also do small parts with it. It's biggest drawback (Bearing in mind it's size) is lack of dust extraction but I only use it for small things. I think you can rig up one of Clarks industrial vacuum cleaners to perform dust extraction.

If I want to do bigger jobs, I take them to work (We have an advert, for blast cleaning, in Minor Matters), where we have a Guyson 6 blaster (Running with a Vixen pressure pot, which uses heavier grit, so it's faster), running off a 5HP Hydrovane (Hydrovanes give more FAD per hp than piston types). That has a large dust extractor and it's much easier to use. However, the little one at home is far better than a wire brush; it just takes longer than the Guyson and you have to stop every so often, for the dust to settle a bit.