Bead Blasting Cabinet

You might say to yourself "A beadblast cabinet would be pretty far down on the list of things I MUST have." You need to adjust your list.

In restoration, refinishing parts is EVERTHING. Without buying anything, aside from some specialty paints, you could disassemble a car, blast and refinish the parts, and reassemble things and have one hell of an impressive car. A beadblast cabinet is the difference between your restoration looking like it was done in a back yard and looking like it was done by someone who knew what they were doing... even if they didn't.

During the rebuild of my first Mopar, I paid the local NAPA auto parts hundreds of dollars over a period of a year just to beadblast small parts for me. They eventually quit doing it because of the time envolved. They would lose money by tieing up a machineist for hours. I figured building my own would pay for itself in one restoration. It did that... and then some.

A cabinet can be as expensive , or as inexpensive, as you want. I built mine starting with plans from TIP. I used their idea and adapted it to my needs. Parts such as the window, foot pedal, gloves, etc, can be purchased from them or, in most cases, from a local blast media supplier. I spent less than $300 on mine and that included all the fancy hardware from TIP. A buddy of mine built his in a much cheaper frame of mind and ended up with a bigger "box" for under $100!