Fuchs need stripping; no media blasting available here...
 

Hi Guys

I have a set of Fuchs ready for a new lease of life.
Trouble is there is no media blasting (water and sand) service available where I live. Numerous posts here talk of media blasting as the the way to go.

Is bead or soda blasting a safe option?

Cheers
James

I wouldn't use beads, but soda is fine. Walnut shells. Crushed glass. Dry Ice. Those are all "environmentally safe"...which I'm assuming why they don't have sand blasting where you're at...?

Thanks for that.

Plenty of sand blasting available but I'm not so keen on this method as I have heard horror stories.

There is a dry icer here.
So this method is 'safe' for the wheels with minimal risk?

Are you looking at just stripping the paint from the wheels? I would not use anything other than soda or dry ice. If the paint is all your looking to remove aircraft paint stripper works great and will not affect the anodizing on the wheels. Just make sure to wear the right protective gear as it will eat through nitrile gloves in about 10 min.

You may have trouble finding it where you live, but I ended up finally using Aircraft stripper since all the previous stripper hardly did anything to the paint. I really never knew what made a particular stripper Aircraft but it definitely was more effective. One thing I also found was to put a heavy trash bag over the wheel surface after I put the stripper on, it seems to keep the stipper in contact with the paint longer and made it more effective.
Good luck

Thanks Guys

I'm looking to take wheels back to a matt alloy finish, leave the rim raw (but protect with Vaseline?) and paint the centres satin black.

I agree. If you are looking to just strip paint, dry ice blasting may not be the best solution. Dry ice blasting can be used for removing paint, but the time required and the cost is probably out the ballpark. Some paints can take up to an hour to remove for just 1 or 2 square foot with dry ice blasting. Another issue is that dry ice blasting is quite a bit more expensive then sand and water. 1 pound of dry ice costs about $1-3.

-Tucker
The dry ice resource.