"Sam Hayes Merritt, III" wrote in message
...
basskisser wrote:

I'd bet it's true. Walnut shells are a great cleaning medium and are
used a lot.

Some show had a thing about them being used for sandblasting. Something
about how they can get them the coarseness they want and they aren't near
as destructive as actual sand when blasting.

sam


Yep.........and plenty of media to choose from when doing abrasive blasting.
It is not limited to sand.

From http://www.pfonline.com/articles/0605qf1.html

"Commonly available blast media includes agricultural materials such as
ground nut shells or starch grit, mineral substances like aluminum oxide or
silicon carbide, ceramic shot and grit, glass in the form of beads or
granular crushed glass, various plastics formed into beads or ground up into
angular particles and metals such as steel shot and iron grit. Today, all or
most of these media are engineered materials, formulated or processed to
emphasize useful characteristics for impact treatment. It should be noted
that some of the media in many of these categories of materials are
primarily marketed for outdoor or single-pass blasting operations versus use
in longer-cycle cabinet blast media delivery systems."

On some specialized precision parts, A local machine & die place here
uses powdered dry ice for blsting media. It costs like crazy, but is
very neat. it blasts away rust, and polish's at the same time. PLUC it
immediatly evaporates, not leaving any kind of grit in special oiling
channels or being embeded in rough castings on highly valuable
industrial parts.

Oh, it is EXPENSIVE! But I suppose worth it.





JimH wrote:

Yep.........and plenty of media to choose from when doing abrasive blasting.
It is not limited to sand.

From http://www.pfonline.com/articles/0605qf1.html

"Commonly available blast media includes agricultural materials such as
ground nut shells or starch grit, mineral substances like aluminum oxide or
silicon carbide, ceramic shot and grit, glass in the form of beads or
granular crushed glass, various plastics formed into beads or ground up into
angular particles and metals such as steel shot and iron grit. Today, all or
most of these media are engineered materials, formulated or processed to
emphasize useful characteristics for impact treatment. It should be noted
that some of the media in many of these categories of materials are
primarily marketed for outdoor or single-pass blasting operations versus use
in longer-cycle cabinet blast media delivery systems."