Sand blasting, Take 1.

So I was giddy with anticipation this past week thinking about the sandblaster on its way to me. I had several day dreams about the paint and primer flaking off in huge swaths, revealing pristine body panels smooth and tender as a baby's bum. Friday night I opened the blaster, took it apart to examine its parts, put it back together, read the instructions and read them again. I couldn't wait for the morning.

At go-time, I put the suction hose into an old bag of play sand we've had sitting around. I sipped my coffee while the air compressor filled its tank. Then I sat on an old paint bucket and fired away at the front wheel well. At first it was pretty sweet. Paint flaking off, check. Primer flaking off, check. Violent sandstorm to my face, check.

About 30 seconds into it, something strange happened. I'd read about it in the manual. The sand was a little damp, which caused it to clump up inside the hose. I got another bag of coarser sand that seemed drier than the first and went back at it. Maybe too coarse to be ideal but it still blew through pretty well. This time the sandstorm to my face had bits of glass and, as far as I could tell, shrapnel. A few minutes into it, I had water blowing out with the sand -- another condition from the manual which means there's water in the compressor tank. After filling and draining the tank a few times and still getting water, I put the blaster aside for the day and went back to sanding.

My sandblasting daydreams did not come true -- at least not this weekend. I poured the damp sand into a bucket in my brick-oven of a garage, hoping it'll dry out before Saturday.

I went to the store and found a 5" flexible disc for the drill that uses adhesive-backed sandpaper, which I tried after the lame attempt at sandblasting. It works awesome for the first few minutes, and fair after that. So after a couple hours on Saturday and a couple more on Sunday, I think I have all the primer off the hood and much of it off the deck lid, and several other areas are cleaned up as well.

In a couple weeks I'll need to do a 21-point turn in the garage and see what the other side of the Beetle looks like -- I haven't seen that side in 5 years.

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I can't remember how long I had the Beetle before we started fixing it up. I'll track down the repair records and find out.

I have just a handful of memories driving it when it was blue-ish. One of which was taking a friend and her parents for an evening jaunt around Neosho, to show off the old beast. The top was down (because it made tearing noises when we tried to put it up). All I remember is how they commented on what a surprisingly smooth ride it was for such a small car, and then when we got back, after I took the key out it sputtered long enough for us to all get out and walk around to the back and watch the engine turn.

Another time, my friend Bryan and I drove it up to a soccer tournament in Joplin. We took highway 86 back to Neosho, and I sped up to about 75 approaching one of the highway's big S-curves and said something like, "Let's see how she corners!" Bryan tensed up and grabbed oh-crap bar on the dash. I put both hands in the air above the windshield as we hit the curve, and as he inquired as to my intentions, we blew straight off the highway and onto a side road -- my plan the whole time.