Sandblasting

I purchased a small hand held sandblaster and it works pretty good, except I found out that all blasting media is not created equal.

These are tiny steel balls and I used these when blasting carroded aluminum or the cast iron cylinder head. They are hard but don't have sharp edges so they are a little more gentle than the crushed glass

This is crushed glass. I made the mistake of using this on aluminum and it pitted the piece so badly that I had to sand the entire thing to get it smooth again. This stuff works great on getting paint and rust off of steel.

This is crushed walnuts and it is amazing stuff. If you have to pick any one media to use on everything, this is your answer. You can blast paint right off of chrome without damaging the chrome or you can use it to get aluminum nice and clean for polishing. I used this on the entire engine, chrome pieces and all.

This chrome nut on the steering stem was painted so I used the walnuts and the paint came right off and left the beautiful shiny chrome undamaged.