1968 Ford F-100 - The Bump Side Build-Off - Tech

The "media" part of media blasting can mean practically anything these days and isn't a guarantee that what you're getting is safer than old-fashioned and highly abrasive sand. Anacapa Soda Blasting primarily uses two different types of media for blasting-sodium bicarbonate and garnet, which is more abrasive than mild soda and good for heavily rusted surfaces.

Once the cab was set up in the blasting booth, Angel went over the processes with me and showed me the areas where they would use soda and where they would use garnet; it was gonna be a half-and-half job. That doesn't mean they were gonna mix the soda and garnet together; it meant they would blast all the surfaces that still showed paint, which was still quite a bit of the truck's surface, with the soda and come back and hit any rust with garnet.

Angel pointed out that the top of the roof, the lower part of the firewall, and a few spots on the cab floor that had surface rust...

...would more than likely need a bit of the garnet to totally remove the rust.

Working in a soda-blasting shop is a much safer environment than a shop that uses sand. Sand spreads crystalline silica into the air, which can cause silicosis, a respiratory disease that is usually fatal. Sodium bicarbonate, on the other hand, is nontoxic and can actually be used for blasting outside without posing any environmental risks. The guys soda-blasting still need to suit up to keep clean and get fresh air inside the booth, but at least they have peace of mind about their health.

At the first break we went into the booth to see how the soda worked on the '68, and all I could say was, "Wow!" The surface of the metal looked like it was brand new! There was no sign of any texture or metal removed that's common with sand and other media, the steel was smooth, and the heat discoloration from the factory spot welds could be seen perfectly. In fact, Manny Vega, owner of Anacapa, said the soda is so mild that it won't hurt chrome, stainless, rubber, or glass, and after seeing this, it's easy to believe.

Another example of the usefulness of soda blasting is this Pontiac "Honeycomb" wheel that a customer brought in while I was there. These wheels are capped, so to speak, in a rubber material GM called Endura that was used in the late '60s and early '70s on lots of musclecar pieces, but how would you restore these? Sanding and sand-blasting would remove and distort the Endura, and chemical/acid stripping could possibly ruin them, so it looks like soda is the answer since it won't harm the valuable wheels while removing/cleaning off the old layers of paint-yet another use!

While the guys geared up for the garnet, Angel showed me the areas they would use it on, like here in the floorboards. While they weren't totally rotted out, there was enough scaly rust that the soda wasn't cuttin' it, literally.

Check out how nice this cab corner is, and luckily for me, they were all like this. If you look carefully where the rocker panel starts, you can see that the surface is a different color. That's because the lower part of the firewall was hit with garnet to clean it up, and the rockers were done with soda, which left 100 percent of the sheetmetal's original finish from the factory.