"Soda Blaster" Buisness Catching On Fast

"Soda Blaster" Buisness Catching On Fast 30-6-7 Charles and Alice Klein of Columbia, Ill., are proud owners of a SodaBlaster, a trailer-mounted cleaning machine which they bought last spring. They like the way it cleans vintage tractors which have been subject to years of neglect. The Kleins are serious collectors owning many antique tractors and cars. They use their SodaBlaster mostly to restore their own tractors, but also have a thriving sideline business doing work for others in the area. Tony Smock of St. Joseph, Mo., who is a SodaBlaster distributor, says other tractor restorers around the country have also taken a shine to the SodaBlaster. The SodaBlaster uses the same idea as a sand blaster, but it hurls baking soda instead of sand. Users say it does as good a job of stripping off paint as sand, but does much less damage to the metal underneath. The idea isn't new but is gaining in popularity (see FARM SHOW's Vol. 23, No. 4). The machine the Kleins own comes with a self-contained air compressor on front and cooling fans on one side. It holds two bags of soda, which dump into a small tank on back of the trailer. The Kleins say the Soda Blasting process is ideal for cleaning all types of delicate equipment. It eliminates the need for sanding, scrubbing, and abrasive blasting. But unlike sand blasting, the air has to be cooled or you'll end up with a mess of gunk. Smock says the soda blast system easily removes carbon, grease, oils, gasket materials, surface corrosion, paint and coatings from a variety of alloys, plastics and other surfaces without damage. The soda blasting idea originated several years ago as a way to clean the Statue of Liberty. The "skin" of the statue is about the thickness of a nickel, and it had about five coats of paint on it. To use a sand blaster would have meant destroying the skin. When FARM SHOW recently called the Kleins they had just finished soda blasting a Deere 720 tractor and were ready to prime and paint it. It took three hours to soda blast the tractor. "We don't like using a sand blaster because the sand gets in bearings and other cracks and crevices. Then, when you paint, the sand splatters all over and messes up the paint job," says Alice. Alice says Soda Blasters were used extensively to remove mold from houses after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.""A big advantage of using baking soda is that it's environmentally friendly. It doesn't contaminate the soil and breaks down grease so well there's no need for a big cleanup." The Kleins bought their Soda Blaster last spring for about $40,000. They buy soda bags by the pallet full. "It's a big investment but we think it will pay off over time. We charge by the bag instead of by the hour, at a rate of $50 per bag. So far we've soda blasted a total of six tractors since we bought the unit. Usually farmers bring their tractor to us. Sometimes they bring fenders or other components. We even soda blasted a Corvette for a customer." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Charles Klein, 104 Gall St., Columbia, Ill. 62236 (ph 618 281-5064) or Tony Smock, P.O. Box 6264, St. Joseph, Mo. 64506 (ph 800 865-6595 or 816 232-9510; fax 816 364-0155; tonys@sodablastersales.com; www.sodablastersales.com).

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