What is it for? How fast is the speed of the glass beads going when guns are treated? What's the size(s) of the beads? Thanks in advance.

Glass bead blasting puts a fine satin reduced glare finish on Stainless Steel firearms, and is used to prep regular steel firearms prior to a matte hot caustic bluing.

I use a blasting cabinet that is 4 ft wide x 30 inches deep x 36 inches high. It has a containment system and recirculates the glass beads, and a vacuum system for pulling off the blasting dust.

The beads are from Potters Industries, Inc, and are called "Ballotini Impact Beads", size AD. They are very fine, much finer than the sugar you have for your coffee.

The blast gun I use has a nozzle opening about 1/4" inside diameter and runs at 100 psi air pressure. You must have a large enough air compressor to keep up with the nozzle, my compressor is 15 CFM at 100 psi.

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Currently in Exile on the Beautiful Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.

Email Address is rifles@earthlink.net

Web site http://home.earthlink.net/~rifles/

[This message has been edited by John Ricks (edited 05-02-2002).]

John,
You have all I wanted to know, thanks.

I have a similar bead blast cabinet that I use for restoring smaller car parts. Shoots glass beads or sand and works great. I have never done any gun work with it, but I would think with the correct media, it would work good. TIP is the company that makes them.

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Shane Marquardt