Cheap Way To Sand-Blast A Pipe

Cheap Way To Sand-Blast A Pipe FARM SHOP Maintenance 33-2-7 Brenden Janssen is a fabricator and inventor who often builds with used oil field pipe "flow lines", which measure about 30 ft. long and 2 3/8 to 3 1/2 in. dia. Instead of using a grinder or a sandblaster to remove any rust and debris, he drags the pipes down a gravel road. To do the job, he uses homemade threaded inserts that screw into the coupler end of each flow line. Each insert has a metal "tab" at one end with a hole in it so that a length of chain can be attached. Then he uses his tractor or ATV to pull the pipes along a gravel road, weaving back and forth so the pipes will roll around for maximum exposure to the gravel. Sometimes he pulls up to six pipes at a time. "It's a simple idea but it saves time and money. In most cases it eliminates the need for sand blasting," says Janssen, of Vega, Alberta. "The gravel works like a big sand blaster and scrapes the pipe super clean. I can go a quarter mile down the road, and when I come back the pipes are as polished as if they had been chrome-plated. All I have to do is wipe them off with a dust rag and I'm ready to build something. I think the same idea would work with any kind of pipe." Each flow line has a swelled taper at each end where the coupler attaches. Janssen cuts 8 in. off the threaded section of the pipe, just past the swell. He cuts out a cap from a 3/8-in. thick steel plate and drills a 3/4-in. dia. hole in the center of the cap and inserts a 3/4-in. bolt and welds on a nut. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brenden Janssen, P.O. Box 75, Vega, Alberta, Canada T0G 2H0 (ph 780 674-5920; tubalcaintechnologies.com).

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