Make Your Own Enamel Sifters for Powder Coating.

This weekend I'm taking a class on how to powder coat and I ordered a dozen colors of powder coat paint. My experience in enameling has proven its very easy to contaminate the powders with left over powder from the last color I've used even when very careful so I decided I wanted each color to have its own dedicated sifter but that wasn't coat effective since they run between $6-$10 dollars each. After looking around I didn't find any information on making your own so I decided to figure out how to build my own. I have tons of pipe that's been ripped out of the old bathroom so I started with that and recycled wire. The finished sisters ended up costing me 20 cents each for the screen. Even if you had to purchase everything it would still be mor cost effective if you want a bunch of them.

Here’s what my finished product looked like.

Supplies
5/8” length of 5/8” copper pipe for each sifter
Pipe screens
1 foot of 16 gauge wire for each sifter
Quick set epoxy
Wire cutters
Metal shears
Pipe cutter
Ring mandrel
Drill
Pliers

Directions

Cut your pipe how ever tall you would like your sifter mine are 5/8” tall.
Cut your wire 12 inches long and fold it in half.
Place the two cut ends into your drill chuck and tighten. Place a long piece of your piper something slightly smaller into the wire loop as shown then carefully use the drill to twist the wire. You can over twist so go slow.

Once twisted, release the wire from the chuck and with the ring mandrel round up the section that goes around the pipe, make the loop measures a ring size of 5.25. Hammer larger if necessary or tighten up the loop by twisting the handle with a pair of pliers to make it smaller.

I soldered my handles on but I would just epoxy them on next time since they aren't gong to take any heat. So epoxy your handle on to the pipe.

Once the handle epoxy has cured epoxy the screen to the bottom of the sifter. When this has dried cut away any overhanging screen from the edges of the sifter.

Using your pliers curl the end of the sifter handle, I think this makes them easier to hang on to.

My sifter is much smaller than the large version I already owned but just as effective. You could make larger sifters if you can find larger pipe screens.