Friday, June 13, 2014

Sandblasting is NOT that easy.

So let me pre-face this by saying I forgot to take pictures of before and after, but I will make another post with the finished product.

For the past week and a half (leaning a bit towards 2 weeks), Jarrett, Nicole, and I have been sandblasting the convertible top to the Volkswagen beetle. One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we didn't quite have enough visibility when sandblasting, dust would be so dense that it was pretty hard to differentiate between the bare metal gray finish and any rust/paint. There were open spots in the seals, causing multiple leaks while blasting, which at first was a problem because inhaling the dust just makes it very uncomfortable. Mr.Gamarra tried resealing it himself but that didn't work, so we wore the proper air respirators, but we were causing too much dust that it affected everyone else in the shop. So Mr.Gamarra was able to get in contact with the company that sent us the sandblaster and informed us that the vacuum in it wasn't strong enough to clear the dust created from the 2 sandblaster attatchments being used simultaneously. For the past 2 days we had one attachment in use the whole time and just rotate between technicians (Jarrett, Nicole, and I) so we all were able to blast everything accurately. For me personally it's a lot like painting, where your eyes gets accustomed to the application of the base coat (seeing the bare metal) and you can't exactly tell what the dried color looks like (trying to see the unblasted parts through the dust cloud.)

That's it for now, if there are any mistakes please point them out and I will make the appropriate edits. I hope you enjoyed reading and have a nice day.

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