Info on Sand Blaster

[Ed Walsh]

Folks,

Looking for some insight a good sand blaster. I have 6 - 100+ year old mantels that I want to restore. I was thinking that sand blasting might be the best way to get thru all of the layers of who knows what that is on each of them. They have been uninstalled and can be blasted outdoors.

I was hoping there might be something reasonable out there that could do this job.

Thanks, Ed Walsh

[Nova]

Because of the varying densities in the grain pattern of wood I would NOT recommend sand blasting. A chemical stripper would be your best bet.

[Andy Dingley]

Not a hope in hell. It's a good way to make driftwood look-alikes though.

Also there's a real risk of lead poisoning if you take paint of that age off as a fine dust.

[Mike Marlow]

I wouldn't do it Ed. The sandblaster is going to raise havoc with your wood. You'll probably have lead paint issues to deal with as well. I'd use a chemical stripper. You'd need a pretty hefty compressor to sandblast anything more than very small spot stuff anyway.

[Dude]

If you sandblast, you need a pressurized sand tank to maintain the pressure to the gun. You would also need enough air to get up to about

150 lbs.in the tank. Sand may be too coarse a medium and you could sie something like ground up pecan shells but it would take longer to blast. Blasting will cut deeper into the soft grains than the hard grains of the wood, giving a washboard finish, and sand will pock the wood like crazy. I would look for a company that does chemical dipping and they strip the paint off in a dipping vat and then nuetralize the wood after. I restored a beautiful Mahogany sewing machine cabinet doing that. the other option I would take is stripping it myself.

[Ed Walsh]

Thanks to all for the replies. Seems there is consensus that sandblasting this is a bad idea. As one already suggested, I'm going to look into having them dipped and stripped.

Thank You Ed Walsh