Walnut Shell Blasting Preparation Tips

Walnut shell blasting is great for removing paint from soft metals, such as aluminum, brass, and sheet metal, and is commonly used to clean engines and transmissions. It's ideal when you need to clean paint, grease, or dirt from a material’s surface without damaging the substrate materials.

If you are looking at doing a blasting job, here are some tips that will help.

How to Prepare Your Surface Before Blasting

• Before blasting, wash. By power-washing the area you intend to blast, you will remove surface contamination. A power wash will not only cut through any grease and oil on the surface, but it will also cut your blast time in half.
Removing oil and grease will make it easier to see if there are cracks, holes, or cavities that should be plugged before blasting. To protect these areas, use plugs of various sizes and threaded bolts.
Power-washing will also prevent salt contamination. If you do not remove salts before painting a surface, the result can be a loss of paint adhesion.

• Don't rely on your blasting to remove stickers, tape, and decals. Remove them beforehand. It can take significantly longer to remove these items with blasting than it takes to remove paint.

• It is also wise to check the toughness of the paint on your surface. You can get an idea of how much work you are in for by scraping the blade of a knife against the paint. Start with one light pass. If you are able to remove enough paint to get down to metal with this single movement, blasting the paint off should be no trouble.
If you have to scrape the blade down two or more times before you see bare metal, however, you know that the blasting process is likely to be longer and that you might benefit from a heavier grain of walnut shell to do the job.

• You should also take some time to protect bolt threads. The best way to do this is to get some clear plastic tubing that has the same inside diameter as the bolt and slide it over the top. Do this for every bolt that could be affected by the blasting process.

As in many industries, as in life, being prepared can save a lot of time. And money.

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