Blasting media

Hello everyone, I just joined up after reading all the posts about blasting. I'm not specifically a hotrod enthusiast but I love cars and just bought myself an air compressor, paint gun and sandblaster. After reading numerous threads on here I've learned a lot about sand/media blasting but I have a few questions remaining. I have found one local (well two but the other one is about an hour away) supplier of blasting media but they only offer three types of media, being glass beads, aluminum oxide and jetmag. Now I plan on using this blaster for removing paint and rust. I know that it's better to use different media for removing paint and rust but I would like to know more about these three medias. I've read quite a bit on glass beads and they seem reasonable for removing paint without damaging the metal (albeit a bit slow). Aluminum oxide from what I understand is much (much, much, much) faster than glass beads at removing paint/rust, however does it produce a lot of dust, warp sheet metal easily and get wet easily? I don't know anything about JetMag at all besides the marketing blurb on the website (I've searched on here and found only three threads not even relating to it). How quickly does it remove paint/rust, what kind of dust levels does it produce, sheetmetal warpage?

I'm using it in my garage so I would really rather it produces the least dust possible, I've been using dried sand but it makes too much dust and I've already completely warped the side panel from my computer case it's also a pain to clean up and I can't say it removes paint all that well. I'm using a Coleman 60 Gallon single stage (3.6HP, ~11.5CFM@90PSI and 155PSI max) compressor with a Uni-Ram economy pressure blaster 10 Gallon (40 to 100 grit) with the cheap valve control.

The supplier quoted my around 0.53CAD/LB of glass beads and 0.83CAD/LB of aluminum oxide, didn't ask about the JetMag (but I would imagine it's the cheapest).

I haven't gotten the prices from the other supplier but they offer sorel mix, glassgrit (recycled glass), garnet, aluminum oxide, bellshot & bellgrit, hematite, glass beads and natural sand, yeah much more selection. Has anyone used glass grit? When I get my license back in December I plan on driving up there and getting a bit of everything to try out.

Thanks for all your help (sorry about the long post ).


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The expensive abrasives are meant for cabinet blasters because the can be reused.

Any major blasting is usually done outdoors with the cheaper types like Slag, tan Silica or White Quartz. These can be reused a little but looses it's sharpness & creats more fine dust.

For thick paint I use coarse stuff. For pitted rust, you need a finer grade to clean out the pits. Finer stuff is slower.

That PC case is super thin sheet metal, so it needs real low pressure and blast at an angle to the surface.