[Steam-engine] sand blasting a boiler

George Erhart g_erhart at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 11 11:07:28 PDT 2005


I think that "full of sandblasting sand" is a bit of an over statement. I believe that they found some sandblasting abrasive in the safety and that when tested, the safety did not lift. I don't think they assigned any of the blame in the failure to the fact that the abrasive may have cause the safety to fail. From what i remember of the report, they spent more time on the crownsheet and stays than the other appliances. I think the general idea was that because of the flash of steam, the safety would not have stopped the crownsheet failure from occurring. But, It would seem to me that if one remove all of the applicances (safety, whistles, injectors, etc.) and capped all of the openings, then you should be able to sandblast without issues. 
 
As to the issue of removing boiler stampings, etc. I am assuming that you could use less agressive abrasive (walnut shells) that would only attack light rust and paint, but not remove any real metal. 
 
BTW, my father-in-law has told me that the previous paint job on my engine was done by using a steam jet to remove old grease/oil and any paint that wanted to come off. Then, they brush painted the engine. Apparently, they had something that provided a decent amount of steam to do this. (It was not done using the engine that was being painted.)
 
George

JEFF LUND <lundmachineworks at yahoo.com> wrote:
I think I remember reading that comment, and it has to
do with the Medina incident. The safety valve on the
boiler that failed was full of sandblasting sand


George Erhart
Loveland, CO



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