Soda blasting

[billytwiglet]

Hi

has anyone had any experience of soda blasting on wooden boats?
I've seen excellent results on grp and metal and cleaning up structural timber in buildings.

[JimC]

Yes. Catastropic. If the boat contains softwood in the area under consideration don't even consider it.

[neil]

If anyone mentions Walnuts I'll scream.

[Rupert]

Walnuts ruin a nice Christmas chocolate...

Quite agree with Jim about the effects of soda blasting - may as well leave it out in a saharan sand storm.

[davidh]

John,

I can only echo Neil's comments!

If you do a search on here you'll find that walnut blasting is 'supposed' to be kinder to the wood than soda.

I wanted to go down this route with the hull of the Smokers and invested a huge amount of time, effort and not a little money in chasing the details down. In the end, I ended up with a real expert on the subject, who took one look at the merlin hull and said simply "don't do it.... " to the point that he would not even take the job even if I'd asked him to.

Admittedly - that was with walnut shells but as I've already said, it blasting terms these are the equivalents of kisses from your sister!

So - the bottom line is a don't do it, but if you do, please take lots of pics so we can see the before and after

Dougal