Making sure to use a grit of media fine enough to pass through the gun. I used 40-80 grit glass bead I picked up at Northern Tool and it worked well. Use head and eye protection along with a quality mask, I'd advise a hood as well as you're going to be wearing the media in short order. It will go everywhere unless you have a containment around the blast area.This isn't meant for blasting a whole car, though if you are a glutton for punishment, it would most likely do it. Just be mindful the tips will wear in time and need replaced. Replacements are available at low cost. And you'll go through a bunch of blast media. I had no problem in my 1 to 2 hour blast session. Maybe went through 25 lbs of glass bead that I captured and recycled into my cabinet. Biggest time eater was refilling the hopper.I bought and used this for 4 months. While that may seem a long time, I am not a professional blaster, and I do not use this tool full-time 4 hours a week. It has had intermittent usage in 4 months, I have only gone thru 1 1/2 50lb bags of garnet #80 media. The media has worn a hole thru the ceramic nozzle, as well as the steel insert at the base of the ceramic nozzle. I honestly believe this is an item that should have lasted longer for a few weekends of use on various small metal parts such as nuts/bolts and brackets on a car I'm working on. Yes, it works. No, it won't be a durable part of your tool hoard.A known wear part on a tool should be readily available, and not approaching half of the cost of the entire tool. The steel insert as well.It is made in the USA, which is great. It burns through a lot more media than I thought it would and the adjustment valve to regulate the media usage doesn't do so well. It seems it's either feast or famine with the thing. All open, the parts are cleaned well but the full hopper only lasts a few minutes. Turn it down, and the media lasts longer but doesn't clean the piece as efficiently. It is a mess too. You will need a face shield and something to corral all the media blast. I was using Black Beauty blasting media and trying to get old paint off of cast iron.I gave this a good rating because it work well right out of the box. I loaded it up with aluminum oxide about 30 times only stopping long enough to refill and let the compressor catch up. I did have the trigger hold itself wide open a couple of time but it cleared up and stroked on. The hopper valve got hard to open and close after about the 15-20th load but after cleanup it too is working ok now. I did a video on it, do a google or YT search for DIY Cardboard Sandblasting Cabinet ProjectI like the size and fact that it is light, the downside because of its size it holds minimal media and surprisingly goes through it fast.Not good enough for use with pancake compressorsReally wish replacement parts were sold through Amazon, shot the steel insert out when I was cleaning ( didn’t read all the warnings not to lol) found the part and it’s more for shipping than the part.Id be better off getting a second blaster to keep around for parts.Our guys love this. We grabbed it to do some light cleaning of brick where flashing had previously been tarred in to place and it did the trick. It's currently making the rounds from job to job and I think our guys are making up excuses just to use it. It's not a super high end product, but for the price, it does the job without hauling out the big hopper for more serious sand blasting. Great for small areas that need some touch up. Should last for a while, but I don't see it lasting 30 years either.