Sometime after we installed a used pressure-blasting cabinet in my shop 40 years ago, I noticed that I was having difficulty with some of the soldering projects that went through our blast cabinet, such as tinning sheet metal. I didn’t make the connection between the used cabinet that we had begun using and my problem getting solder to properly “wet” the metal that we cleaned in that cabinet.
I failed to make the connection between the aluminum oxide abrasive that came in our first used cabinet and my soldering problem. A salesman friend who sold abrasives happened to mention, off-handedly, to me one day that the residues from aluminum oxide abrasive could interfere with certain soldering and welding processes.
My cranial light bulb lit, and I ran some comparative experiments. Blasting with aluminum oxide media does interfere with solder and weld wetting. I wish that I had known that before I experienced the problem. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.
Although I cannot claim that this book will inform you about everything you need to know about cleaning metal, I promise you that between its covers is the most useful knowledge that I have gained in more than 60 years of scrubbing metal things to clean them. I hope that this will help you in your own work. After all, as someone once didn’t say, “wisdom emanates from the end of a parts cleaning brush.” Well, okay, someone should have said that.
Here is another example in the metal-cleaning realm of what-you-don’t-know-can-hurt-you: For many years I was on a wild tear to keep silicone-containing items out of my shop. Although some silicone-based products are very good and useful, the danger of getting silicone on metal, primer, and paint is enormous. Sprayed finishes fisheye when they hit it, and that is huge issue.
Accordingly, I banned silicone waxes, conditioners, lubricants, and other formulations from our shop, in the fear that our spray booth air intake would pick up residues and transport them onto the surfaces we were spraying. I went to great lengths to scrub bare and primed parts with silicone removing washes before top-coats were sprayed. For all of that, sometimes we still saw fisheying in our sprayed finishes.
One day, reading the specification sheet for the compressor oil that we were using, I noted that silicone was the basis of that lubricant’s foam suppressant.
Wow! Against my efforts to keep silicone out of my shop and to clean it off all surfaces that we were spraying, I was sending the stuff down our air lines and depositing it on the surfaces that we blew off with compressed air to clean them. I was even using air that contained silicone to propel paint out of our spray guns. I wish someone had told me that most compressor oils contain silicone foam suppressants. Fortunately, a few do not.
I quickly found a synthetic compressor oil that was silicone free. After a few months, and three compressor oil changes, our mysterious fisheye problems disappeared.
My hope is that this book will inform you regarding the best cleaning practices and processes, and that it will help you down the road of discovering more about all of the changing approaches to cleaning metal for yourself.
Matt Joseph
Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin
Several people contributed to making this book possible with their generous contributions of time, expertise, and knowledge. They, and others too numerous to list here, made my work on this project easier and the result better. The blame for any deficiencies is mine, alone.
Charlie Ruemelin is, in many ways, the father of soda blasting in this country and around the world. Throughout his long career in abrasive blasting, and soda blasting in particular, he has contributed to the development of this technology and to expanding accurate knowledge of it. He worked hard with me, helping me to understand what soda blasting is and is not. In that process he cleared up several misconceptions that I harbored regarding soda blasting and opened my eyes to its true and great potential.
Herb Statz worked long and hard with me on much of the photography in this book and made several suggestions for improving it as we went along.
Frank Weinert, a master of abrasive blasting, generously allowed me to photograph him at his work. He also contributed greatly to my knowledge of the blasting craft.
Wayne Ayers is a master metal former and fabricator in Chetek, Wisconsin. He possesses nearly magical abilities in his field and discussed several aspects of the content of this book with me, influencing my thinking in several areas about how best to clean metal.
Rob Sinklair, who is pictured on the cover of this book, worked with me on several aspects of this book and made many useful suggestions to improve its coverage and content. He also submitted his frame-blasting project for Chapter 7.
Chris Beebe readily consented to write the foreword and did a great job, for which I thank him.
Bob Lorkowski, proprietor of L’Cars Automotive Specialties, offered critical advice and resources when I needed them.
Herb Tobben at Clemco Industries Corporation shared his great knowledge of blasting abrasives with me. This was invaluable in expanding my knowledge of this topic.
Kurtis Ohse, also at Clemco, was a willing and useful resource for locating and providing photography of Clemco blast equipment and a great source of information on abrasive blasting in general.
Nick Capinski at the Eastwood Company helped greatly by supplying photographs of the blasting equipment, supplies, and accessories that Eastwood sells. He did this on short notice and with great enthusiasm for my project.
I wish to acknowledge the contributions to this book of our ever-helpful shop cat, Ambrose. While evaluating this wood-grained dashboard for soda blasting, Ambrose decided to add his proverbial two-cents’ worth. With substantial effort, I have managed to keep him out of the rest of the photos in this book.
Mike Doty, a highly qualified materials scientist with advanced knowledge of a wide range of coatings and, in particular, how to remove them, was kind enough to spend time with me and share his knowledge.
TuneRS Mall, the highly reputed Porsche restoration and service facility in Pompano Beach, Florida, provided a number of photos of their CryoDetail dry-ice blasting process that appear in this book.
Badger Spray & Paint Supply & Repair in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, provided me with much useful information about steam-cleaning equipment and processes, and allowed me to photograph steam-cleaning machines of many different types and capacities on their premises.
Andrew Clark of Amalgam PC in Sauk City, Wisconsin, not only kept my computer running sweetly for the duration of this writing project, but went above and beyond the call of duty solving problems with some of the graphical resources I used in this book. His advanced understanding and working knowledge of a wide variety of software and formats solved problems that baffled me. He always responded to my insoluble problems with, “We can make this work.” And he always did.
Bob Wilson at CarTech was both helpful and understanding as we moved this project from concept to working idea to book. His support was continuous and valuable.
My wife of 50 years, Gail Joseph, provided all kinds of support and helped with photography when I couldn’t be in two places at once (behind the camera and demonstrating a process).
Finally, my shop cat, Ambrose, tried valiantly and often to help me with photography. He only narrowly avoided being included in several of the photographs that appear in these pages. And in one case, he actually made it.