SpeedBlaster® Red - Model 007R Red

A simple blaster, fantastic for baking soda blasting. Will certainly try it with glass beads. Easy to refill the reservoir, large cap that threads on precisely. If your air is wet, it will clog, but the reservoir swings out allowing cleaning of the orifice. Simple. Made in the USA, that’s important to me.

I had a few smallish rust spots that needed to get cleaned out. Paired this with some sand and went to town. Worked great, was able to get the rust off, then fill/prime/paint. Rust stayed away for a decent while, then I had to use it again. The parts of the car that were getting the rust were the parts where chips and dings were pretty common. I've also used this for other jobs around the house where you need to sand something down but there's not a fantastic way to get an angle with a block sander, but I can get the nozzle where I want it.

It is made in the USA, which is great. It burns through a lot more media than I thought it would and the adjustment valve to regulate the media usage doesn't do so well. It seems it's either feast or famine with the thing. All open, the parts are cleaned well but the full hopper only lasts a few minutes. Turn it down, and the media lasts longer but doesn't clean the piece as efficiently. It is a mess too. You will need a face shield and something to corral all the media blast. I was using Black Beauty blasting media and trying to get old paint off of cast iron.

Making sure to use a grit of media fine enough to pass through the gun. I used 40-80 grit glass bead I picked up at Northern Tool and it worked well. Use head and eye protection along with a quality mask, I'd advise a hood as well as you're going to be wearing the media in short order. It will go everywhere unless you have a containment around the blast area. This isn't meant for blasting a whole car, though if you are a glutton for punishment, it would most likely do it. Just be mindful the tips will wear in time and need replaced. Replacements are available at low cost. And you'll go through a bunch of blast media. I had no problem in my 1 to 2 hour blast session. Maybe went through 25 lbs of glass bead that I captured and recycled into my cabinet. Biggest time eater was refilling the hopper.

Obviously you have to have a pretty big air compressor to run it. My compressor is 85 gal and set to about 110 psi. And I turned the flow valve slowly on the gun , with little Bursts of the trigger until it was set properly and it worked a lot better than I thought. And it saved me a lot of time. Prepping all the little brackets I needed to do.

Works great with black diamond sand.

I bought and used this for 4 months. While that may seem a long time, I am not a professional blaster, and I do not use this tool full-time 4 hours a week. It has had intermittent usage in 4 months, I have only gone thru 1 1/2 50lb bags of garnet #80 media. The media has worn a hole thru the ceramic nozzle, as well as the steel insert at the base of the ceramic nozzle. I honestly believe this is an item that should have lasted longer for a few weekends of use on various small metal parts such as nuts/bolts and brackets on a car I'm working on. Yes, it works. No, it won't be a durable part of your tool hoard. A known wear part on a tool should be readily available, and not approaching half of the cost of the entire tool. The steel insert as well.

Our guys love this. We grabbed it to do some light cleaning of brick where flashing had previously been tarred in to place and it did the trick. It's currently making the rounds from job to job and I think our guys are making up excuses just to use it. It's not a super high end product, but for the price, it does the job without hauling out the big hopper for more serious sand blasting. Great for small areas that need some touch up. Should last for a while, but I don't see it lasting 30 years either.