Geo-Blast Inc - Calgary

I had Geo-Blast come to my house to blast some body panels for a 1950's vintage truck I am restoring (i.e. cab, fenders, doors). In general the experience was good, operator was skilled, nice to work with and did his best. Equipment functioned great and there was not dust while blasting. However there are some shortcomings to wet blasting. 1) It is not as productive as wet blasting, best guess it was 40-50% slower. I can only guess the water reduces the effectiveness of the abrasive. We did not get through all my parts I had planned for the day, so they gave me a break on the quoted price, so was satisfied. In my view the benefit of dustless blasting partially offsets this. 2) When blasting parts that cause blow back towards the operator causes his face shield to get dirty which makes it hard to see, as a result, some areas were missed and required frequent shield changes. This is not as much an issue with dry blasting, as you can blast until your visor is too pitted to see. 3) Rust removal was not quite as good as I had hoped. Heavily rusted parts were quite time consuming to clean and were not as clean as I would like, so pulled them out of the batch and will dry blast them. I will also have to take my panels in for a final dry blasting to clean them up to my satisfaction before applying primer. I like my parts perfectly clean, so may be a bit picky on this point. However, this should be quick, as 80% of the work has already been done. I will use a fine grit to minimize the possibility of warping. 4) Small parts are difficult to do, as they have to be fastened some how. When I dry blast small parts at a vendor, the welding gloves are tough enough to take the abrasive, so recommend dry blasting them Despite this, I was very happy with the fact the wet blasting did not cause any warping of my panels and that is a huge benefit. The water has a rust inhibiting agent added which worked well, as the parts did not rust. They also gave me a couple liters of product to use, so I can clean my own parts in the future. I would still have this done again, but will dry blast the areas that are not as prone to warping prior to wet blasting (i.e. edges, welded parts, seams, etc.). I would also dry blast any heavily rusted parts. After that is done, I would then take the parts in for a wet blast of the areas that are easily warped by dry blasting (i.e. roof, door panels, hood, etc.) Final comments... As far as cost goes, they are on par with having some on do dry blasting for you. Be prepared to help and get dirty, so that you can keep the operator blasting. There is also some mess, so be prepared to do some clean up after. Also check your local noise bylaws and let your neighbors know in advance. Even though this was done during a weekday it probably exceeded the noise threshold of my local bylaws.