Soda blasting in South Wales

[Bitsilly]

Hi all,
does anyone know of a good soda blaster, mobile or fixed, that is in or near to Cardiff?
I have found Peak Precision in Abergavenny but they have not got that much experience of doing cars.
Many thanks.

[Andy8421]

No help I am afraid, but for what its worth I was at Spyder last year picking up some new stainless ladder door frames and discussed soda blasting with them as they used to be proponents of the technique.

They said they have moved back to using a chisel and elbow grease as the rectification required after blasting was greater than the time taken to scrape the paint. A few weeks later I went to Option 1 to pick up some recovered seats and got a similar story.

Frankly, it wasn't what I wanted to hear. If / when you go down the blasting route, could you report back on how you got on? I really don't want to spend the winter with a chisel.

Thanks,

Andy.

[Bitsilly]

In all honesty, Spyder doing it was what swung it for me.
Bottom line is no one can fault elbow grease, but some can fault soda blasting ☹️
Cheers

[smo17003]

I'm currently stripping my S3 using chisels and a scraper. I can highly recommend getting a heavy duty glass scraper. Not the flimsy plastic handled thingy but one of these https://www.wholesaleglasscompany.co.uk ... wE#SID=210

If you have multiple layers of paint you may find that the chisels take off the repaint layers, leaving the original paint. The scraper is good for getting that last layer off.

And an oil stone for keeping the chisels sharp is also a good idea.

And some goggles, because you will get some paint flakes in your eyes.

Mike

[Bitsilly]

Cheers, I think I’ll get a couple.
I also heard that Stanley blade holder scrapers are good as they hold the blade at a good angle. Something no doubt undermined by how I hold the handle but I think I may have a lot of time to perfect a technique!

[jono]

I used a variety of wood chisels and a Dewalt DWE6423 sander - yes it takes a while but you can dip in and out and the results are excellent.

I was going to go down the blasting route and even a professional soda blaster who does nothing but cars advised against it on GRP

[Donels]

I was advised against soda blasting on GRP, so tried chisels, Stanley scrapers, various blades and a DA sander. It comes down to what your Elan was painted with and what you personally can use effectively.

I ended up mostly using a DA sander and various grades of grit to remove 7 layers. There is no one answer.

[JonB]

My paint guy said soda blasting leaves a residue that must be cleaned off completely and the body dried prior to gel crack repairs and paint. He said he would be sanding my car back to gel.

I’ve seen the quality of his GRP work (basically flawless after a year) and I’m not going to argue with him…

[Bitsilly]

I guess there goes another fad into the dust! There is so much on the web saying how great it is but I guess not for old fibreglass!

[smo17003]

This video shows the end result of soda blasting an Elan. You can draw your own conclusions.

https://youtu.be/FZ-4cmtsnFQ

[Ianashdown]

This is an interesting video! I would be quite happy with the result he received, except perhaps for the gelcoat that remained.

I’m at the stage of removing the paint and have tried a few different processes. I bought a 110 Lb HF soda blaster, but have yet to get it to work effectively. For the moments it did work it seemed to remove the paint and gelcoat quite well. The problem is the mess the used soda makes. If you don’t have some way to contain the soda and clean it up afterwards, it’s not a practical method. I blew about 30 Lbs of soda in my driveway. OMG! What a mess! If I can get the blaster to work properly I may investigate a cheap Easy-Up to contain the mess.

I’ve tried citrus based stripper in a local area and it worked quite well to remove the multiple paint layers, it’d had at least 3 repaints, but it didn’t touch the gelcoat.

Scraping with chisels is slow and tedious, but does work quite well on the multiple layers of dry, hard paint. It gets challenging when you come across soft filler.

My DA, even with 80 then 60 grid discs was very slow and not very effective. My compressor couldn’t keep up, I know I need a bigger compressor.

60 grit on a soft faced block, by hand was surprisingly effective!

However.

All this is OK if you’re only thinking about the exterior, but I want to remove all the paint, everywhere. Inside the engine bay, trunk and underneath. I just don’t see how that can be done efficiently by hand.

I have not looked terribly hard yet, but there don’t seem to be many services who do soda blasting, either at their facility or mobile.

So. Where do we go from here? I think some of the more aggressive media may be suitable IF it is used carefully, with low pressures etc. Probably not a good commercial solution, but fine if it’s your time!

I’ll continue to experiment to find the best solution, but I do see a new compressor, an Easy-Up and 100’s of Lbs of media being involved!

Fun, fun fun!

Ian
SoCal

[Elanintheforest]

That is a great video and it illustrated how well the soda blasting process reveals the true state of the bodyshell...the good and the bad!

Soda blasting is probably the best way of cleaning the old paint from a fibreglass shell, possibly being bettered by ice blasting. It uses Sodium Bicarbonate which strips the layers of paint in such a manner as to do no harm to the substrate. It is also a very good de-greaser. If the pressure is turned right down, it can be used to clean oily hands, and I’ve seen a coke can being stripped of it’s paint without distorting the metal underneath. There is no heat buildup.

I was looking for someone to do a couple of Elan shells for me about 15 years back, and found a guy who was giving up his mobile blasting business, so bought his kit. He was using it for removal of paint from oak beams in historic houses and churches, and removal of graffiti from similar buildings.

There are two problems with it. First, the size of the kit you need to do a shell! The plant itself stands about four foot tall and weighs in at around 180 pounds. The compressor needed to drive this beast needs about 60 cfm, and I used an old road-making diesel powered compressor, the type they use to drive a jack-hammer to dig up a road. The second issue is the mess! It really needs to be done in a dedicated building (an old shipping container is ideal) or you have to build a fairly air-tight ‘tent’ around the work you’re doing.

The photos below show my kit.

One thing you must do after a shell has been blasted is to clean it down with a mild acid and water wash. Blasting leaves a light waxy residue, which is alkaline and needs to be removed before any paint preparation takes place. Obviously the shell also needs to be dried, either in the sun or in a low heat bake oven, before any further paint prep takes place.

After blasting my shell I sold the plant on to Spyder Cars in Cambridge (UK) where I believe it is still cleaning up old Elan shells. The photos show the size of the kit required, so don’t rush out to Frosts to buy their soda blasting setup for doing a body shell. They are good for small pieces, and that’s all.

Soda blasting is also good for polishing chrome and glass! It will not remove rust, but give it a nice polished finish. You will need a more aggressive blasting media for that.

There is a soda blaster in the Bristol area who knows about blasting fibreglass and aluminium shells. The last time I saw his Facebook entry, he was doing a DB5 Aston, which has a quite fragile aluminium skin over a steel framework. As with all blasting work, if an incompetent idiot is blasting, they can do damage. Make sure that if you choose to go this route you use someone with the relevant experience. And remember, you will find it really hard to chisel off or sand down the black paint in the engine bay and boot without doing a fair bit of damage, and blasting an Elan shell should take about 1 working day.


Mark