Soda blasting

[dropmdead]

Any one out there with experience of soda blasting paint off wood doors etc?

Whilst I have the time and an empty house, I was thinking of going to town and all the interior cottage doors, wood facings and skirting boards.

 

[splash]

I once bought a soda blaster, fire extinguisher type thing.
Cleaned my aluminium casting but massively messy with soda everywhere outside the workshop

 

[scotch_egg]

One of my Dads old customers uses soda to clean beers casks. They did a motorcycle engine for me. It was messy but as soon as it rained all was gone. Not quite sure how that would work out inside.

 

[vitalspark]

Any one out there with experience of soda blasting paint off wood doors etc?

Whilst I have the time and an empty house, I was thinking of going to town and all the interior cottage doors, wood facings and skirting boards.

I've stripped varnish from garden furniture using a single phase compressor and blast gun. Although effective it was very slow. You would need to use commercial kit to do something as large as a door I think. I blasted it indoors using a tarp on the floor and up the walls to contain the worst of it.

 

[Cuthy246]

Don't have experience with soda but have done plenty of grit blasting. If you are planning on doing all the doors and skirts etc then your best bet will be to hire the proper kit/company to do it. Blasting needs ludicrous amounts of air so you are talking road tow diesel compressors in the 200+cfm range. You will also need the proper PPE, absolute minimum thick leather gloves and hood/visor with filtered forced air feed, a dust mask simply will not cut it here!! Preferable would be a blasting suit (leather overalls) . You will also need some large extraction fans and ducting as blasting indoors the dust will make visibility terrible. Even though soda is less aggressive than other media it is still entirely possible to gouge surfaces and make holes. Gets quite expensive by the time you have hired all this kit and may be more economical to find a local company to do the blasting.

 

[Will the chippy]

DON'T. Just don't. In between the annular rings is soft timber, the rings are hard. Grit, soda or walnut shell blasting just eats the soft timber, it'll finish up looking like the beach when the tide goes out. All ripples. You'll knacker some potentially nice doors.
I was on a job where they did farmhouse beams, which looked fine, but they did the doors and a nice old table. I ended up putting a new top on the table, it was ruined.
Chemical stripping is the best way.

 

[dropmdead]

So consensus is to leave be and heat gun etc the paint off?
It has probably 150 years of paint, some oil based , some water based.
There's some rather nice mouldings and cornicing throughout - at one point it was a surgeon generals house, and all rather original.

 

[Will the chippy]

So consensus is to leave be and heat gun etc the paint off?
It has probably 150 years of paint, some oil based , some water based.
There's some rather nice mouldings and cornicing throughout - at one point it was a surgeon generals house, and all rather original.

Heat is fine but careful not to burn the wood as the burn can go quite deep, and will take a bit of sanding out.
Old paint will have lead in it and gives off toxic fumes. Plenty of ventilation.
I'd burn off 90percent of the old paint then chemical strip the last bit.
It's a ball ache of a job, but if done right looks great keeping all the old mouldings etc.

 

[dropmdead]

I'm trying to preserve as much of originality as possible, as it still has some nice features throughout (including the bath, sink and taps etc and the servant bells which still work)

 

[MarinePMI]

Beware of lead based paint. Don't want to be breathing in that stuff when removing it....