Soda blasting

[Steve T]

Am thinking of buying a soda blasting kit. Need a compressor for painting anyways so just need the pot, gun & media. Does anyone have any experience with soda blasting?

[rhine]

Have a chat with Michael @ http://www.millarsodablasting.com/I have always found him helpful and knowledgeable. I bought some kit from him, but think that he also does local calls, and you can bring to him and he will allow you to blast using his kit. Looking at your location this may not help. Would also need to think about getting a primer layer on PDQ.

 

Richard

[Mark69]

Hi Steve what are you hoping to achieve with soda blasting, I looked into soda blasting originally and was advised it wouldn't remove heavy rust or body filler .

Eventually I decided to have all external panels stripped de-rusted and primed at envirostrip. Heard a lot of horror stories about warped panels after blasting. The tub will be blasted at home using crushed glass, the company doing the work cleaned the stonework on my barn a few years back and they are very confident they can clean tub with no distortion.

Mark

[Steve T]

More of a method of paint and light rust removal really. I've got a body tub here that has been to Envirostrip and I've been quite amazed by the amount of 'salts' that are trapped in the seams which is a bit off putting. They seem inert so shouldn't be a problem though. Unfortunately, said body turned out to be badly twisted so is just being used for parts for my original which at some point in its life has been Hammerited!!

[littlejim]

I did all my blasting, chassis and body panels, with garnet.

No panel was harmed in this program.

If you are doing it indoors some sort of "tent" like arrangement will cut down the fine dust that ends up going everywhere otherwise.

Edited August 2, 2016 by littlejim

[Don H.]

I've used soda blasting on my old home kit. It's very gentle (at least at the flow rates and pressures my aged system can produce). There isn't a chance it would remove paint, and really doesn't do much on rust. It's good for slightly oxidized metal or grimy corners.

 

Here are images of the solenoid on my car before/after soda blasting at home.

 

[Steve T]

Hmmmmm, so basically I need a better abrasive than soda then as it's mainly paint:rust removal that I'm hoping to do. What's this 'garnet' stuff?

[WELLSY]

I have had very good results on aluminium carb bodies, motorcyle barrels and casings with soda blasting with my diy kit. Not good ,as already said, on steel and rust. It was bicarbonate soda I used.

Wellsy

[Peter Cobbold]

Hammerite will peel off during a steam clean.

[rhine]

Soda will not touch the rust, but I have been using a product called Archifine which will remove rust and paint. You have to be careful with all rust removing media to not distort your panels, but in my experience if you stand off the panel 4 inches and angle the media delivery 30 degrees or so off the vertical then you will be fine. I have been using 40PSI and have had no panel distortion. If you are more aggressive, then you start putting heat into the panels, and distortion will follow.

 

Not me, but gives some idea ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQpYDJlNZEI

 

A bit like painting, find something to practice on first

Do not use 'sand' as it will absorb water and will clog up your blaster.

+1 for some sort of tent or a lot of space as it makes a mess. Eye protection and a mask are a must

You can recover Archifine off a tarp, push it through a sieve and go around again.

 

Need to plan for what follows as the surface will oxidise quickly - certainly where I live! Certainly within a small number of hours.

 

Good luck, Richard

[littlejim]

If you go to the places that sell blasting media, garnet is what you will be sold in lieu of sand.

It doesn't give you silicosis which sand would. You still need to wear a decent mask/respirator to keep the dust out.

[Steve T]

Blimey! Looks like a right minefield!! Have found a bag of Honeite at work which looks very fine so I may research that. We also have some 'cleaning' media which I think is soft iron so I'll look into that too. Might start with paint stripper lol.

[ed_h]

I've tried many of the specialty blasting media, but now use exclusively just ordinary mason's sand. It's cheap, easy to get, and as effective on paint and rust as the others. We live in a humid area, and I don't think sand is any worse than other media in terms of water condensation. With a common water separator in the line, I don't have trouble with water. Even with sand being so cheap, I still collect it on a tarp and re-use it so it doesn't pile up on the ground.

 

Chemical stripping first makes the blasting go a lot faster.

 

Ed

Edited August 3, 2016 by ed_h

[stuart]

Stripping paint/underseal/stone chip/trim glue off first will make all the difference to how effective blasting with any media is. Get it all off first will save you attempting to get too aggressive with the blaster which can lead to warp-age/distortion.

Stuart.

[had17462]

U can use kiln dried sand about £3 a bag

Nick

[Steve T]

Cheers guys. Will paint strip first and then try the works Honeite first, but will probably move onto the kiln died sand. I'm guessing I should be using a fairly low pressure here. Is a blast pot better than a hand held gun, or is there no real difference?

[ed_h]

Cheers guys. Will paint strip first and then try the works Honeite first, but will probably move onto the kiln died sand. I'm guessing I should be using a fairly low pressure here. Is a blast pot better than a hand held gun, or is there no real difference?

 

If by handheld gun you mean the little self contained units with a gravity feed container, you'll only get a minute or so of blasting out of a fill of media. A pressure pot blaster like the one in the picture will hold about 100 pounds of sand. With one of these and an ordinary compressor, I'm not sure it's possible to create enough pressure to distort a panel.

 

I'm in the US, but I've never had to buy kiln dried sand. Just bagged sand from a hardware store or home center. I do screen it, though, because larger grains can clog the nozzle.

 

Ed

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by ed_h

[Steve T]

Yes Ed, that's about the size of pot I'd been looking at. Will probably go for it methinks ????????

[littlejim]

That's the kit* I used, and think it doesn't have the oomph to distort panels, unless you stay in the one spot for ages, which all the advice says not to.

Definitely wouldn't use sand unless you know what to do about protection of lungs.

They swapped from sand to garnet for a reason.

 

* buy a handful of tips, you'll wear a few out.

Edited August 4, 2016 by littlejim

[Steve T]

I've got an old army twin filter gas mask.....makes me look a bit of a deviant, but it works ????

[littlejim]

With sand it is not the big particles that jigger the lung tissue, it is the really fine ones that can pass through a filter membrane and get right to the end of the airways that do the damage.