I’ve been asked a lot about how to clean wood that has been burned in a house fire with a sandblaster. Even though I don’t have a lot of experience with this, I included a video and tips on what you will want to do.
Tips for Sandblasting Burnt Wood
- Use a soft blasting media that won’t embed into the wood or carve away too much of the non-burnt portions of the wood in an aggressive manner.
- Examples: Dry ice blasting media, crushed walnut shells, corn cob grit, soda blasting or plastic beads may work.
- Large sandblasting equipment. Since most burnt wood projects are rather large, you will need to use industrial sized equipment to efficiently get the job done. This requires a large pressure pot sandblaster, along with a large diameter hose and nozzle, and an high output air compressor.
- Lighter blasting pressure. To ensure the wood won’t get damaged further, a lower pressure is usually used. Start with a low pressure and turn it up until it cleans away the burnt part efficiently without carving into the good wood too much.
Video
I am sharing the below video of someone that does this type of work. Although the video doesn’t apply to cleaning burnt wood, it is similar in the cleaning process.
If you have done this type of work, please leave a comment below of what process you used. Thanks
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I have not done it to clean burnt wood per-say, but I am working on using my pressure pot blaster with glass beads to carve a plaque that will then be lightly burnt to fill in the details, then fine sanded to clean up the flat main surface, and remove excess char. Since we etch a lot of mirrors with many fine details, I think adding wood to our offerings is a plus. Especially considering we do all of this as a side line for our small wood shop business.