Persistence Is Futile

To answer Terry's question, No. I did not get the piece blasted as I intended.

I got started yesterday morning at 9:00 am. I set up some saw horses in the drive way. Carried the cross member out. Rolled the blaster out. Pressurized the compressor. Ready, set, rain. Well not really rain, but it did start sprinkling.

There is not point in sandblasting a part in the rain. Getting it wet would cause it to start rusting again almost as fast I finished up.

I quickly moved the x-member back into the garage and went back out to grab the blaster, et al. Before I got it all back into the garage the rain stopped falling. So I started setting up again. I had it all setup and was doing some scraping to get some heavy grunge off when it started sprinkling again. Again I moved everything back into the garage and again it stopped raining. This time I decided to wait a bit to see what the weather was really going to do.

In the mean time, I did a little cleanup and organization work in the garage. My neighbor dropped by and we talked cars, trucks, and motorcycle for a while. He helped me move the truck bed floor. That thing is heavy.

After about an hour without a drop from the sky I decided to give it another go. I setup again. This time I got as far as turning on the blaster. I made about 5 minutes of progress before the rain started again. This time I had to really hustle because I needed to sweep up the sand before it got wet. Wet sand is not good.

At this point I decided to call it.

At around 3 pm, after 4 hours without a drop, I decided to give it one more try. You know the drill. I drag everything outside, get everything setup, it starts to rain and I drag it all back inside. OK, this time I really give up for the day.

Today instead of dragging out the blaster, I just used a small pick, similar to a dental pick, to clean some gunk out of the many nooks and crannies on the cross member. I did this for about an hour before I put it way again. All the prep work is done. There is nothing left to do but the actual blasting. Someday the weather will cooperate. Someday. Maybe next weekend. Cross your members fingers.