Soda Blasting Hulls

[willysail]

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone had any experience with “Soda Blasting” the bottom of there hull. I have some repairs that I need to do and after talking to several people the consensus is to soda blast the hull below the waterline. I wanted to know if this is a standard procedure and would it damage the gel-coat. It would be nice to get all the years of residual bottom paint off.

[treilley]

Soda blasting works well if done by a professional.

I stripped my previous boat's hull(35 ft.) with walnut shell blasting. Rented a compressor and blasting unit locally and bought 6 50lb bags of walnut shells. 1/2 day and it was done. Total cost abour $450.

[willysail]

Treilley,
Someone told me that any kind of hard abrasive would damage the gel-coat finish.

[sawingknots]

all i know is its expensive but does a good job depending on the operator,chopped up corn cobs work well too

[willysail]

will this pit the surface of the boat

[Barquito]

I was told by my surveyor I should do this too. Possibly consider doing a barrier coat after media blasting. This would help cover any dings from when whole walnuts and corn cobs chip the bottom of your boat so that it looks like a golf ball. (actually maybe a golfball finish on the bottom would be faster?)

My question is: How much of a mess does it make? My boat is on gravel in a boat yard. Will they be pissed if there is 300 lbs of walnuts under my boat?

[tommays]

This is one of those it really depends on whose driving and wear you live as on Long Island at this point when they do bridge work its full on tent with LARGE vacuum units kind of like asbestos removal

I am really not sure what there doing with the leftovers BUT its all HAZ-MAT and i would think just flying under the radar right now

[hellosailor]

Soda blasting is just media blasting, using baking soda as the medium. Corn cob, crushed walnut shells, sand, are also used as media. Each has a different amount of abrasiveness and a different cost, and the reason for soda blasting is that it is one of the gentlest ones. it will strip the paint without harming the gelboat--if used at the right pressure, as any pro should be able to do it.

Yes this is a common way to do the job, and a safe way. Your alternative is chemical strippers ("rinse, lather, repeat") or other conventional abrasives. I think soda blasting is probably as cheap and fast as anything else, and if you can arrange your schedule to fit the guy's slack time, or get more than one boat for them to work on while they're at the yard, you can probably trim the cost down a little too.

It can even clean old paint off PLASTIC without marrring the surface, so if there's anything else on board that needs "unpainting"....

[BarryL]

Hello

I had my boat soda blasted in 2008 and I was VERY happy with the results.

If you want to see some pics of before / after soda blasting, go here:

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-m...done-test.html

Barry

[tommays]

Barry

Who is the trusted contractor on Long Island