Budget Soda Blaster

thompsonmx100 wrote:

The reason for the people saying not to paint after using soda is because it does not rough the surface up enough. It will remove oxidation, paint not as well. use it with dry powder. I made a cabinet out of a clear rubbermaid container. To keep the majority of the powder contained. It works well it is easy to polish afterwards. as it does not rough the surface up too much. If you haven't give it a try yet do it. If you need to remove paint try a sand blaster it will save time and a lot of mess.

X2 I agree with every word you said. Sand on steel soda on aluminum. I also use sand on the plastic body parts before paint. The perfect rough up for paint on plastic.

Used baking powder on a set of 29 Smoothbores made them look new!Harbor Freight has both grades of the Armex industrial soda in a lot of their stores.I found Arm & Hammer baking soda in 13.5 lb bags at Sams Club for 6.85 per bag. It is with the swinming pool supplies.

I thought this would be a good addition to this welfare sodablaster thread. I bought a cheapo gravity-feed blaster and got some recycled glass media, but didn't want to lug my compressor out of the basement, so I built a ghetto blast cabinet. It's just a rubbermaid bin that I duct taped a little window in and cut a hole for my arm and airhose in the side.







and after a little sanding with 600:



and best of all I can blast in the house, no mess, and it weighs nothing, so I can take everything with me if I need since it is a rubbermaid bin after all

Nice setup - perfect, and you can get cheap, HUGE rubber bins for larger stuff too.

... looks like alot of sanding scuff on the cover... :dry: Would this be avoidable by using just the soda/glass blaster on a nice high pressure?

I've heard that soda gives alot shinier finish, but I could be wrong.

I only gave it a quick sand to clean it up a bit, with progressively finer paper and some jewelers rouge it will look perfect, this was just to give a quick before and after.

Just an update, as has been mentioned I believe earlier in this very thread, the cheapo gravity fed blasters like mine have a small feed hole so I was getting congestion, I drilled it out a bit and it worked fantastic. BUT I was going through the media in the hopper really fast, so I more than doubled the media capacity by just threading the side of a drink bottle onto the hopper fill hole.



now it blasts really well, I love this thing!

I used your Rubbermaid idea, just a trial setup on a cheapo container. I need to make the acess hole gaskets real tight, might use an old innertube or something.



I wound up removing one of those gaskets and just making a small hole in a new one just so the blaster hose fit. I got alot of blow-by on the otherside so I was jamming towels in by my arm.

This is definitely on the end of season cleaning to do list;)

Any updates on that Borax stuff? The supermarket baking soda does pretty good for a factory finish, but with the age of some of these parts there's a few spots that are still dark.

I just pulled my z1 900 motor apart for a rebuild, and am going to harbor freight to get the soda blasting media and am going to blast my whole motor, i hoe it turns out good, i am going to use the rubbermaid idea also.

when doing the rubbermaid thing get the biggest one you can get, I regret using the one I did because my cases won't fit. Also, make a bigger window than I did, you won't regret it.

Yeah, I have a real big storage box in my basement I just wanted to try it out first and see what improvements I could make. I might even secure a glove(s) just like a bead blasting cabinet to seal the openings.