I’ve had that Harbor Freight sand blasting cabinet since 2011 and dragged it everywhere. It got beat up and the paint faded in the desert sun, it even rusted in the rain but I didn’t want to toss it. After more than a decade, I decided to rebuild it, better than when it was new. I wanted to stand when I used it.
The first thing I did was strip the cabinet down to the sheet metal. Then I sanded off the rust and painted it with John Deere Tractor Yellow Gloss spray paint out of a rattle can. It looked a lot better after painting it but there was still a lot more to do. I used their Farm Implement paint because it is high quality, durable and inexpensive.
I wanted a rolling base, which I made out of wood from my scrap bin. I also used heavy duty caster wheels I had in my junk drawer so I only spent money on the spray paint so far.
I always seem to have scrap 2x3s in my scrap bin, so I used them to build the support frame for the blasting cabinet. I even had enough scrap wood to build a drawer to hold all of the compressor accessories. And I had a pair of drawer slides I salvaged from a decomposing presswood desk that went to the county dump last year. I’m glad I kept them.
The best part was, I had one large wood piece left over from building my mini-bar that made a great face for the drawer.
But then I had to buy a $5 pull handle and four bolt kits from Home Depot to fasten the cabinet to the rolling base.
While I was at Home Depot, I also bought an electric utility box, which I needed to install the power for the interior lighting and power the compressor and dust collector vacuum. A switch would power the light, as well as turn on the power for the air compressor and vacuum. All left over stuff from the garage junk drawer.
On the back of the cabinet, I installed a pneumatic inlet for connecting the air line from my compressor. I could move the now rolling cabinet anywhere, and connect the power with an electrical extension cord.
Inside the cabinet, the pneumatic inlet gave me a socket to plug in a short air line to the sand blasting gun. I installed the interior light above so I could see the work going on when sand blasting.
To help see, I amplified the light source by painting the interior white so the light would reflect adequately. And if you can tell, I replaced the box gloves with new ones that weren’t crumbling.
You can tell the difference between the dull red lit interior and the brighter interior after it was painted white in the two photos below.
That’s the dust collector I got from Home Depot that clamps onto the top of their ubiquitous buckets.
The hose on the side plugs into the sand blasting cabinet; the outlet on top plugs into a ShopVac to keep the dust under control well enough to work inside the garage. The dust cyclone collects the dust into the bucket so the ShopVac filter doesn’t get fouled. It’s a great bit of kit.
Now, I can roll that sand blasting cabinet anywhere inside or outside the garage to sand blast all kinds of things like antiques, firearm parts, auto and motorcycle parts, remove paint from carved wood designs, any time, anywhere.