anyone familiar with soda blasting?

[xlittlejohnx]

Anyone familiar with soda blasting? I understand that its a great way to remove paint and has many uses. From what I read, its basically baking soda and water at high pressure. The equipment seems to be priced well when I research online. I've seen small portable units to full size units mounted on a trailer. I would buy a portable unit for use on the car, decks, exterior paint removal at home, etc. The trailer mounted units seem worth their asking price as well. I'm considering buying the equipment so any thoughts are appreciated.

[devotion]

Unless you are planning on starting a business, if you are just planning on doing a project or two of your own, just pay to have someone do it for you...for a couple hundred bucks you can take your car to a shop, have them do it (once you remove everything) and get it back in a day or two...it is SOOOO messy its not something you really want to take on at home. Messy, painful, and quite frankly, dangerous. With a pressure blaster that is worth anything, it can rip you open really really fast. If you are thinking about just getting one of the little tank units for small projects, I honestly think you are better off getting a wire wheel out and going to town...if you are needing to get some serious rust off of a particular object, just make a rust removal outfit with a battery charger and a bucket of water! Works like magic.

[kbken62]

I have one. You can pick them up for about $100bucks at Harbor Freight. 15 pound type.

Once you get it dialed in, they work pretty good. (Dialing them in, is not as easy as one might think)

Issues: Moister is your enemy with blasting. You need to make sure the air coming out of your compressor is dry. You also need a fairly high output compressor. Recommend 80 grit or better. If you get the 120 or so, it is just so fine it will not take the paint off the car for 5 seconds on one spot.

The final problem is that if you wash it onto your lawn or plants after you finish, it will likely kill them from the Salt content. You need to sweep up most of it and the remainder shouldn't present a problem.

I like it better than my blasting cabinet. It made my intake manifolds on my S14 look pretty good. Also cleaned up the exterior aluminum on my head pretty well.

But hey, if you are doing your whole car, take it in. If it is just spots, or small pieces, it's decent to work with. I loved it for getting into some small crevices or in the folds of medal of the trunk lid.

[devilspace]

I know it's leading the discussion in a slightly different direction, but if you do look at outsourcing the blasting, you should also consider vapour blasting, depending on what you're cleaning up.

Vapour blasting is a mixture of high pressure water and glass beads.

I've used vapour blasting on manifolds, valve covers, carbs. Everytime, they've come up looking brand new! (Then you just need to get the beads out of every nook and cranny!).

[devotion]

oh man, I have used glass before...what a painful experience! No matter what you do, unless you are wearing swimming goggles (major style points) you are going to get tiny beads of glass in your eyes.

[Mike_B]

I also use the HF 15lb soda blaster for clean-up work. It's a really nice little tool to have around - http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,57/page,viewtopic/start,0/t,324272/topic_view,flat/.

It doesn't work real well for corrosion, but for paint and grease/dirt/grime removal it shines. I just use it at the curb and hose the baking soda down the sewar. A set of leather gloves and some googles work well for protection.

[xlittlejohnx]

I also use the HF 15lb soda blaster for clean-up work. It's a really nice little tool to have around - http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,57/page,viewtopic/start,0/t,324272/topic_view,flat/.

It doesn't work real well for corrosion, but for paint and grease/dirt/grime removal it shines. I just use it at the curb and hose the baking soda down the sewar. A set of leather gloves and some googles work well for protection.

Thats the route I plan to take so hopefully I can clean up some of these parts next week...

thank you to everyone who gave some info.