Rob's Rants

Gravity Feed Spot Blaster

Once in a while, a Harbor Freight tool so exceeds expectations that I just have to give it its own page. The Gravity Feed Spot Blaster Gun (item 95793) is just that kind of tool. As usual with Harbor Freight, I initially figured that there was no way this thing would work. I figured it would jam, or the trigger wouldn’t work, or the cheap plastic would break. But when I had a job that could use a little blasting and I saw the gun on sale for $9.99 I figured I’d give it a try. How can you go wrong for ten bucks?

To cut to the chase – it actually works. I wouldn’t use it to clean whole auto panels, but for the spot blasting it’s designed for, it works great. I connected the gun to my 5 HP Husky compressor and filled it with medium grit glass media. My first project was to clean and prep for painting parts of my New Braunfels smoker, which was showing some minor corrosion.

Small Spots

I cranked the pressure up to 90 psi and went after the loose paint. The gun did a great job of removing the loose paint and corrosion. Here’s a picture of some of the small spots that I cleaned (each is about the size of a quarter).

The gun is a really simple device. It’s simply a trigger operated air gun with a hopper on top. There is a small valve that allows blast media in the hopper to flow down into the air stream where it is blasted out of the nozzle. The hopper holds about 1.5 lbs of glass media so you will get about three and a half fills from a small five pound media bottle, which Harbor Freight also sells (at least in stores; I can’t find it online). So there’s really not much to screw up. And this device feels decently built. The metal gun is heavy, the trigger seems strong, and the hopper is pretty solid (though an unintended feature is that the hopper is slightly translucent so if you hold it up to light you can tell how much media is left).

Blasted Grill

Like I said earlier – the hopper is small, so I wouldn’t use this for large areas. And even with it’s size, it does need decent airflow, so a 5 HP compressor like mine is the absolute minimum you’ll need (and you’ll still stop a lot). But overall it does a great job. Here is a picture of the area on my grill that I cleaned. It took just about five full pounds of media.

Overall, I’m thrilled with my $9.99 purchase. For small spot cleaning you can’t go wrong with this one.

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