Needle Scaler

One other thing to be careful of... use a short stinger hose instead of putting a quick connect fitting directly on the scaler. The vibrations will cause the fitting to break off after a while, leaving you dodging a wildly whipping 3/8" air hose. Ask me how I know.

In addition to Stan's idea, the replica 1930s Hughes air racer built a few years back used a needle scaler to replicate forged parts. They CNCed the parts out of billet aluminum and then ran over them with a scaler to give the parts a forged look. Very convincing. Sadly that gorgeous airplane became scrap metal and did in it's pilot/builder on the way home from Oshkosh a couple of years back.

I have no experience with the pistol grip type. I've used the straight type for more than an hour at a time on several occasions and had no problem with that configuration.

I made a series of steel turtles and tortoises with shells about 20" in diameter with swirls of wire feed bead to represent the patterning on the shells. Even using 75% argon/25% CO2 shielding gas there was too much spatter and the beads had a rough look. An hour or two (per shell) of leaning into the metal with a needle scaler removed the spatter entirely as well as softening both the contour and the finish of the metal swirls. I felt like I'd stumbled onto an extremely useful technique.

The first time I ever saw a needle scaler in action it was being used to remove slag from stick welding welds. Nothing but a grinder does a better job, and a grinder produces a completely different result. If you used a scaler for nothing except slag removal it would still be worth owning one.

All the best, Stan

I have stripped several machine tools with a needle scaler. It faster than you would think.

The advantages of it over a sand blaster are that it is faster than the typical tiny home shop blast rig (a scaler will take a 2" wide swath as fast as you can push it), it doesn't leave 300lbs of sand all over the place, and it doesn't drive sand into the workings of mechanical parts. It doesn't require a huge amount of air to run, either. A scaler seems to work just as well or better at 60lbs than it does at 125 of pressure.

Words of warning. Keep it off polished or surfaces you want to leave slick (machine ways, chrome plating, etc) and I wouldn't use it on thin metal. It'll flow it just like beating it with a hammer. Last thing... Get some earplugs. It's about a cross between a jack hammer and an unmuffled chainsaw in the noise department.

For what it's worth, I did try it briefly on the sheet metal, didn't appear to do any damage, but niether did it have much effect on the old paint. A Wagner heat gun and a long handled scraper did the trick on the sheet metal.

• Scalers

Good luck. A needle scaler and a sand blaster are a restorer"s friend.