In article ,
Michael Horowitz wrote:

Just thinking into the future at the moment.

I know nothing about sandblasting except you can apparently use
different abrasive material i.e. glass beads, sand, nut shells (?)

An aircraft I'm looking at has some rust at the tail cone. If I
purchase it, I'd like to remove the rust and prime it.

Assume my A&P says the tubing is structurally intact, but pits are
evident.

Can someone point me to a reference that talks about what I need to
sandblast the area, what abrasive to use, or if the area is small,
some other method of rust removal? Other considerations?

Sorry, but I know only enough to ask a general question at this point
- Mike

Sandblasters do not typically use sand. The most commonly used "media"
is aluminum oxide, which is the same stuff used to make sandpaper. Like
sandpaper, it comes in various grits. You'd want to choose a grit based
on common sense, just like you would when choosing sandpaper. Since it's
propelled by compressed air, adjusting the air pressure will vary the
speed with which you remove rust (and metal) from the surface, with any
given grit.

Once you've used a sandblaster to refinish irregularly shaped objects,
you'll be frustrated with the inadequacy of other techniques. But, it's
unlikely that you're going to remove your tailcone to put it into an
enclosed sandblast cabinet, which means you're going to have to find
someone with a portable unit in your area. Look in the yellow pages.
Glass beads, incidentally, are great for removing very very thin layers
of paint from very smooth surfaces without dulling the finish of the
substrate, but for this job you're going to want aluminum oxide.

Now, I'm going to leave it to you and others more knowledgeable about
airplanes to say whether you ought to be blasting abrasives into your
airplane. If I were to take a wild guess, I'd say you'd want to keep it
away from control surface hinges and linkages.