How did you spend your December? Here at Billings Media Blasting, in addition to preparing for the Christmas Holiday season, we spent the month blasting layer upon layer of top and bottom paint from the historic barge Hollister III, more widely known as the Connecticut River Ferry.

The ferry consists of a three-car barge, the Hollister III, as well as a diesel-powered tugboat named the Cumberland, which brings the barge back and forth across the river. It is the oldest continuously running ferry service in the United States and has been running since 1655. It actually started running before the towns it connects, Glastonbury and Rocky Hill, were founded. Originally a raft was poled across the Connecticut River, it was then powered by a horse on a treadmill before being upgraded to a steamship in 1876. If you are interested in seeing the Hollister III in action prior to our blasting job, click here.

Our project involved removing all the paint from both the barge itself as well as the on and off ramps on each end. Luckily, for us, we were able to blast in one of the heated paint-shop bays of The Essex Boat Works so the frosty December temperature didn’t interfere too much with our progress.

For this job, we specified and used crushed garnet as the primary blasting media, and we went through approximately 12,000 pounds of the stuff. It would have been much more but we employed our Spartan Vector industrial vacuum system and were able to recycle the garnet for two rounds of blasting. In addition, we also used our 20,000 CFM diesel dust collector to minimize ambient dust creation, which saved time on cleanup and were able to have two blasters going at all times, which shortened the blasting timeframe.

One of the challenges we ran into on this job was the significant amount of paint on the deck of this vessel; it had been painted every year since it was new with no stripping between coats. Take a moment to imagine what well over 30 coats of marine-grade paint might look like and you get the picture! To aid in the removal of this thick paint, we initially brought in a steel shot blasting machine and, to our surprise,  soon discovered that was unable to remove it efficiently.  We had to resort to hammers and used them to break the majority of the paint prior to blasting; this ended up being the most efficient and cost effective way to remove the paint.

At the end of the day, this was a fun and very satisfying project for us. We can’t wait until this summer to take the Hollister III across the Connecticut River and maybe scuff a little of that deck paint off so the job won’t be as hard next time.

Here are some before and after pictures of the job.

Finally had a nice string of good weather. Working 7 days a week blasting boat bottoms to catch up from the cold start to the season. On rainy days we are working on putting together another blast cabinet system which we are going to use for “sand” abrasive blasting. This cabinet will allow us to blast smaller parts more productively rather then running a big compressor and dust collector for our blast booth. The plastic media blasting cabinet that we are already using is working great and are looking forward to finding more projects for it. Stay tuned for more changes constantly happening here at Billings Media Blasting. We are always trying to better our equipment and business to better serve our customers!

Hard to believe it is March 31st and it just snowed enough to plow. Billings Media Blasting is itching to get its back logged boat bottoms blasted but the weather does not want to cooperate. The rest of the week looks good and we hope to get a bunch done.

Instead of blasting boat bottoms today, Carlos is using plastic media in a blast cabinet to blast stainless steel pallets. We are removing many layers of paint without damaging the stainless steel.

Lets start the year with offering dry ice blasting to CT.  Now for some reflection on where Billings Media Blasting started.  We began as a baking soda blasting company ready to set the world on fire.  We soon realized that baking soda couldn’t take care of every blasting demand there was.  So we decided to dive into traditional sandblasting which we found opened many doors in rust removal and mill scale removal for steel preparation.  Soon after that we found that baking soda still had many negatives whether it be burning vegetation or even eating through out electronic controls, therefore we got into blasting with crushed walnut shells a close alternative to soda without the many negative effects.

Finally in 2012 after attending a couple sspc shows we decided to look into slurry “dustless” blasting.  From there we tried it and found that it is another great tool for some situations to eliminate dust concerns and yet be able to be extremely gentle for restoration and cleaning of stone, brick and concrete.

As 2012 was coming to an end Billings Media Blasting decided to take the final plunge into dry ice blasting.  After looking more into it it appeared that there wasn’t to many dry ice blasters in CT so we are now in the dry ice blasting business.  Dry ice is again another “tool” in our arsenal of tools for being able to complete any blasting job.  More posts will be coming soon on dry ice blasting as we play with it and try to find its best uses.

Billings Media Blasting has been extremely busy slurry blasting, walnut shell blasting and sandblasting in Connecticut this fall and winter.  We have been all over the shoreline walnut shell blasting boat bottoms bringing our tally for the year to over a 100 boats!

Along with blasting boat bottoms we have performed sandblasting in a chemical room on rusty structural steel at Guida’s Dairy in New Britain CT in order to prepare it for paint.

Last week we did some experimenting with our slurry blasting system running 320 garnet through it to remove soot from brick.  What an amazing job it did it did not even touch the brick leaving it looking like new, we believe it is going to open a lot of restoration possibilities!  The benefits of the slurry are becoming more and more with the dustless blasting aspect and now the ability to be extremely gentle.

Hopefully before the end of this year we are going to be experimenting with  Dry Ice Blasting.  We have never done it or seen it work other then You Tube videos.  We want to see if it will be a worth while investment as it can be another tool to offer our customers in order to meet there blasting needs.

Billings Media Blasting wants to wish everyone a happy holiday and a happy new year!

Monday we finished up the blasting of the blasting cabinet project. Working along with Atlas Metal Works of South Windsor CT and Westside Finishing of Holyoke MA we completed blasting a large blast cabinet for Peening Technologies also of South Windsor.

The goal was to remove the mill scale “the red on the blast cabinet” from the surface of the steel. You may be wondering why we needed to do that.

Well in the powder coating process powder is sprayed onto the steel. In order to make it tough and durable the powder then needs to be baked at temperatures approaching 400 degrees. At this temperature the mill scale if left on the steel will pop off. Causing issues with the finish. With the mill scale removed there are no issues in the powder coating process allowing a tough and durable finish to be achieved.

Tomorrow Wednesday the 10th of October we will be blasting a Moody 44′ Boat. Stay tuned for before and after photos of that project.

Kent Billings is practicing his specialty welding an aluminum Coast Guard Boat to repair some cracks. Check out the photo!

Sorry the finished photos of the steel couldn’t be taken because everything was covered up to load them in to the truck yesterday in the pouring rain.

The assortment of steel pieces being prepared for powder coat are almost done.  Photos will be up by the end of the day.  Along with the sandblasting Kent Billings LLC and Billings Media Blasting also weld many different types of metals and projects.  Today Kent Billings is welding cracks on the structure of a really cool US Coast Guard Boat right here at our shop in Glastonbury CT!!!  Check out the photo!

Today Billings Media Blasting is sandblasting a bunch of steel parts for a large sandblasting cabinet.  We are blasting with crushed garnet at 90 PSI to remove the mill scale in order to prepare it for powdercoat.

Photos of these pieces blasted to clean white metal will be posted at completion.