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Best way to dry blasting grit?

I've got perhaps two tons of bagged blasting grit for use in my Hodge Clemco grit blaster, but although in individual bags, they are 'breathable' and have flaps to allow air in. They were stacked outside by their former owner, and I collected them in a torrential downpour, so they are sufficiently wet to cause clogging in use. Were it summer, I'd spread it out and let it dry, but it's wet Autumn!

Blasting job coming up on my 60 ton press so I need dry sand - any suggestions. I'd thought of perhaps making a bag sized vacuum chamber and boiling off the water at low pressure, but there must be a better way!

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson
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Build a plastic tent around them if you haven't got a small enough room/store to put them in, then use a dehumidifier (with permanent drain or big bucket) to really dry the air out. If the area isn't very warm, put in enough heating so that the temperature stays above 20C to keep the dehumidifier working well. If the bags are spaced out a bit they'll dry out quite quickly.

Mark Rand RTFM

Reply to
Mark Rand

outside

downpour,

summer,

chamber

enough heating

Of course, Mark, I must be suffering from brain fade !! I have a large commercial dehumidifier, the 40 bags are currently in a Portakabin, and I did actually get round to fixing the roof before the weather broke, so as I write this water is being pumped out and is dripping into a bucket - a couple of pints already !!!!!

...doh as Hommer would say

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Just what you need for the small home-workshop blasting cabinet, a tonne (or are they 50kg bags?) of grit...

Mark Rand RTFM

Reply to
Mark Rand

They are an odd weight. Certainly more than 25 Kgs and less than 50 kgs - 40 Kgs comes to mind - so I suppose that must be 1.6 tonnes. I know that the portacabin tilted slightly when I loaded it in . I run the manual cabinet on re-usable grit, but this is once only 'expendable' for the big blasting pot. Intended for motorway bridges and the like. In practise I tend to scoop it up and re-use it - probably goes though twice or three times on average but gets very fine and dusty.

Portakabin is nice and toasty with the dehumidifier running, all those watts of recovered heat. I've wired a humidistat in this afternoon to save on the electricity bill. Down to 55% RH with it raining outside.

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

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