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Any guess what I'll be making this weekend?

Who want's to clean their carb's,, bring your own baking soda.

Ok, so I went out and spent $2.50 on a cheap air gun and $9.00 on baking soda. It worked ok, but I think I'm going to try buying a pressure blaster. Harbor Freight has one for $100. The siphon works for carbs or lighter-duty cleaning, but engine cases, etc (like I tried) need more "blast".
Tony

Do you think I can remove the glass beads from my blast cabinet, and replace them with soda? I heard harbor freight sells soda by the bag for blasting. Does it work on engine cases like the beads do? Let me know

The soda blast media is cheap, compared to glass beads, so there is no need to recover the soda. It's just meesy without a cabinet. Harbor Freight sells soda for $40 for 50 lbs. I buy the same stuff at Price Right grocery store for 50-cents per lb. It seems to take about 5 lbs of soda to clean an engine case. Harbor Freight (junky but cheap tools and stuff) has a soda blaster for $100 and it is on sale for $80 now and you can find a 20% off coupon on the Internet (google harbor freight coupons) and buy the blaster for $65. Based on my home-made siphon blaster, I think I'll try a pressure blaster next weekend and let everyone knows how it goes.

You can't reuse soda. When you blast with it, the soda particles hit the surface and basically explode, that's how it cleans. It's a one time use media. I've also heard that the commercial soda has larger particles so it works better than the grocery store stuff, but I've never used the commercial stuff so can't say for sure.

I can't imagine trying to use it in a cabinet, what a mess.

You still need a large compressor, tank, power etc.. weight and $$ for even a small unit. Ok what is minimum tank and compressor -- that is not clear.

Frz

I am using a 3HP 2-stage compressor with a 22 gal tank and it is probably somewhat minimal. The home-made siphon fed soda blaster works ok, actually I was suprised on how well it did work. A couple of weeks back, I bought a 10 lb pressure soda blaster from Harbor Freight (don't ever buy anythink there without a 20% off coupon) and it works about the same. Since the weather has been so cold, I did not get much of a chance to try it on a few more parts.

Either way, soda blasting for me at least, is something I do in the backyard - it's way too messy for indoors and I would not try to use it in a blast cabinet either...