Ed Walsh wrote:
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


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.