Tool Die grinder

[Doggggboy]

I love my M12 die grinder. I have been using it with Roloc disks to strip old paint and undercoat for some of the Datsun panels. Works great but the short shaft on the disk holder limits it's usefulness as I can't get the body of the tool into some of the corners. Today I cut a 10 inch length of ¼ inch rod and threaded the end to screw into the disc holder. I thought it might start whipping around at speed but it works perfectly with no runout.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I can see that being pretty handy! I've got an m12 1/4" angle grinder and love it. A roloc pad pretty much lives in it, but also have a 3" knotted wire wheel that is very handy too. I'll have to make one of these extensions sometime. I also want to make a cut off disc arbor to squeeze the last bit of life out of my 4.5/5" discs when they get too small for those grinders.

 

[StevSmar]

I bought a corded Makita die grinder. Wow, wish I had gotten one years ago. Useful for woodworking too!

 

[Ironman]

Man, that Datsun cries out for a sandblaster.

 

[Doggggboy]

Man, that Datsun cries out for a sandblaster.

I had the first Datsun roadster I bought partially sandblasted to remove huge amounts of body filler from the doors and the trunk lid. I ended up scrapping both parts and buying another donor body due to the excessive warping. Parts of the trunk lid ended up being too thin to even work with a hammer and dolly. While the speed of sandblasting has it's appeal, the potential for things to go wrong seems to be much less with elbow grease and sandpaper. I will probably be water blasting some of the real complex curves that are difficult to manually sand as they are far less likely to excessively warp. With an unlimited budget I'd probably have it acid dipped but if I had an unlimited budget I wouldn't have bought a car this rough to start with. The saving grace for me is that I stripped the majority of the car 25 years ago. I'm mostly finishing up bits that were not done back then.

 

[Ironman]

For body work I would use a chinese pot sandblaster and walnut shells. These small units use about 20cfm and won't burn through the metal like a commercial unit using 150cfm. They are slower but they work

 

[Doggggboy]

20 cfm would be a stretch for my compressor and at around a buck a pound for walnut shells I'm thinking it wouldn't be a cheap game to play either. I'm sure it would work but I'm also not in the mood to stand outside at minus 28 doing it this winter.
So instead I'll work on getting my Popeye arms with sandpaper in the hard to reach spots.