Anyone ever use a bristle blaster?

[Ratimus]

And George, you found me out. Just don't tell anybody I keep raiding that bamboo scaffolding so I can practice for PITH!

[Tyler]

Okay, okay... I'll confess I didn't want to shell out 250+ dollars for the bristle blaster
(CPO outlets carries the right-angle version for auto body work, BTW, and Nortonsandblasting carries replacement belts).

BUT, wanting to investigate the concept before divesting myself of the funds, I used one of these:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Avanti-4-in- ... 830914-_-N Really, not bad for $17.

So there you go. No accelerator bar, and straight bristles. The finish is somewhat like a cross between a wire wheel rustication (given the striations) and a blast (given the preservation of ring grain).

I'm imaging the accelerator bar would localize the impacts, minimizing the dragging effect and giving greater definition with less of the grooves. I call this initial experiment a success, and plan to take the concept further.

Wait, so you used a normal wire wheel? How'd you do it?

[andrew]

I'm curious too.

[Ratimus]

It's not a "normal" wire wheel; it's a big course nasty thing with stiff bristles. I put it in a Jacobs chuck on my lathe, ran it at 2500 RPM, and pretended it was a buffing wheel. Hold the pipe on it so the bristles travel in the direction of the grain and move the pipe side to side, perpendicular to the bristles. Use a light touch and make several passes. That's all there is to it.

[RDPowell]

I'm very impressed, had no idea it would do that. I'll have to check this brush out.

[W.Pastuch]

That's very cool
A while back there was a guy on a Polish pipe smokers' forum who made some tampers out of briar and finished them in a very similar way. He is a jeweller and he knew the bristle wheels from his jewellery work- so indeed they seem to be conceived for working with metal. Guess it's just logical to try them on wood
I'll try to post the pictures this guy posted in the original thread about his work, he explained the finish was done with a special wire wheel with the bristles mounted around the core in a way that allows them to swing/oscillate, something like that So it seems to be the same kind of tool Ratimus found



I think thanks to this thread in a couple of years every pipemaker will have a wire wheel like this in their shop

EDIT: I did some google-fu using the polish name of this kind of tool and it looks like "matting brush" and "texturing wheel" are two names that lead to the right places.

[Tyler]

This might be the most surprising thread ever on PMF. I read it early and blew it off, now I'm shocked by a cool new (to me) way of doing something.

[LatakiaLover]

Here it is, Gents. (be sure to hover your cursor over the pic):

http://www.ottofrei.com/Texturing-Wheel ... meter.html

[Ratimus]

Does this mean I get a shout-out on Pipedia when these things go totally mainstream?

Seriously though, I am very excited to have other people excited about this. The more people we have experimenting and developing this idea, the more finishing possibilities are available to us poor souls without the money or the space for a blast setup.

[oklahoma red]

Here it is, Gents. (be sure to hover your cursor over the pic):

http://www.ottofrei.com/Texturing-Wheel ... meter.html

Holy crap, these things are coming out of the woodwork now.

[Ratimus]

More:
http://www.gesswein.com/p-8443-mounted- ... =&perpage=

These have the straight bristles but are attached by hinge mechanisms.

[andrew]

I think this might be the biggest surprise for me in quite a while. Wow.

[Thomas Tkach]

I'm impressed. You want to do an experiment, sand it smooth again, then blast it in a cabinet and compare the two finishes.
I particularly like the top.

Or mask half the bowl, sand[paper] and blast the other half! A true side-by-side comparison.


Years ago when I was first messing with rusticating estate pipes, I used the tiny, super-fine wire-wheel on a dremel to bring out some ring grain, but it looked nowhere near this good.

I'm looking to finally pick up a lathe and do some pipemaking if I can geta shop set up wherever I move to after graduation, and this has me excited about finishing possibilities. There looks to be a huge variety of wheel sizes and wire gauges that I'm sure will give lots of opportunity for experimentation!

[ronps]

Inspired by what I read, went down to HD and picked up one of those Avanti wheels. Been playing with it since and although the results are not as good as what's been posted here, it sure does create some interesting effects resembling blasting.

FWIW, I seem to get the best results at lower speeds, 500 - 800 rpm, but I'll keep fooling around with it. Nice alternative to rustication.

Thanks for the post.

[ronps]

Another benefit to this tool is that is does a great job cleaning plateau.

[Ratimus]

I agree about the plateau-cleaning. Very effective.

I was able to pick up an actual MBX Bristle Blaster wheel for $5 from a local abrasives company who had had the thing lying around for years and didn't know what it was. It doesn't work NEARLY as well as the Avanti/Home Depot wheel. They only had the course one and, as can be expected, was too course.

I'm still curious about the Gesswein/Otto Frei wheels: http://www.gesswein.com/p-4122-unmounte ... =&perpage=.

[Charl]

I've tried a similar type of texturing wheel, but the results are useless. I think the fact that the bristles hinge, is a limiting factor for what we want.

[finster]

Thank you Ratimus, thank you. Picked up the Avanti and have been playing. Put it on my 1hp motor at 3450 rpm and got a pretty deep blast being aggressive, it did leave some scratching, but was easily cleaned up with the same tool, lower rpm and a light touch. I put it on my 1/2 hp at 1275 rpm and applying moderate pressure and moving slowly gives a nice and clean blast. More experimentation to come, but so far I'm loving this thing!

[RickB]

So apologies for the necro-thread bump - after having the good fortune to take a class with David Huber last weekend, I'm suddenly realizing that perhaps I'm totally in love with a good sandblast (and even with the mediocre one I did ).

I don't have the means/funds/space/etc. to set up blasting equipment at home right now, so after reading this thread I picked up the Avanti disc and have spent a few hours experimenting. I've gotten it to give me some pretty interesting textures, but none of them bear even a passing resemblance to a sandblast - and any attempts to bring out ring grain (even when I can see it in the block) have obliterated it. Everything is turning out too smooth.

On a few different pieces of scrap I've tried speeds from 500-3200 RPM, going across and with the grain, coming in at an angle and coming straight perpendicular to the wheel, I even tried bending the wires so the angle is further forward and backward.

Best results so far seem to be from coming from multiple angles at a slow speed and using a strong light source with the lightest touch possible and watching the individual fibers as they get pulled away, but I'm still getting more of a brushed finish.

Anybody still doing this, and if so, any advice here?

[DocAitch]

Ratimus, your photos from 4 April 2015 are gone.
Could you re post them?
Thanks,
DocAitch