Well, I broke down and purchased a little used HF standing blast cabinet from a guy on FB Marketplace.
That week there were a couple close, one in Lawrenceville with the accessory dust collector which disappeared quickly, the second in Buford.
It took a few days to hook up with the guy, was in an industrial strip center, the guys relatives had got it to blast parts for engine rebuilds but it probably didn't go well so they were moving out of the space and selling off equipment.
A cursory examination of the unit showed me that they didn't assemble it properly or even put in all the fasteners, so it leaked media all over.
Secondly they were trying to power it with a nail gun compressor which had so little air volume that it wouldn't draw media.
Third, rather than glass beads they were trying to use bagged Play Sand from Home Depot.
Fourth, as it wouldn't draw sand from below they had rigged the feed tube to an upended orange rubber traffic control cone to gravity feed the unit.
I had him hook it up and could see that it would actually blast but performance was pitiful.
He was asking $180, I offered $120, we settled on $140 and I hauled it home.
I could see that it was assembled incorrectly, many of the panels have rubber sealing strips attached to prevent leakage and half of these were visible on the outside of the panels as assembled. It was necessary to completely disassemble the unit and reassemble it. I also spent another $40 on fasteners to make up for all the missing ones. The glass window was cracked but I had a piece of Lexan that I cut a replacement from.
I know this subject has been discussed in another thread but I finally was able to try it out last night and can say that it works.
My compressor only delivers 6 cfm and the manual recommends 9 cfm. I upsized the delivery line and fittings from 1/4" to 3/8" which I think helped but my compressor ran constantly. Luckily I only need it for cleaning hubs, triple trees and other like small items so can give the compressor opportunity to recoup.
Not a bargain by any means but it works and I won't need to send things out.
