I'm doing some cleaning up on my slant head and is it ok to glass bead it? I'm mainly concerned about the guides I don't want to damage them

Just a question, why glass beads? Glass beads are good for getting a peened finish. To clean something up, sand is more effective. When I was working as a gunsmith, I blued alot of guns. I have put a blued gun in the blasting cabinet to remove any blueing, using glass beads (especially if they are new beads,if they are not new beads then they are basicly sand anyway) it did not remove the blueing , only peened the metal. Plus glass beads are expensive.

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Excuse me, does this smell like chloroform to you?

Walnut Shell is my favorite vleaning blast material, very gentle.

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My Swinger gets the Highlight Valet Parking spot over the German sports cars on the Sunset Strip. I love my Mopar.

Since it is already degreased you can just mask things off with a couple of layers of duct tape. I assume you are using glass bead because that is what is in the blast cabinet. It should be fine. Otherwise I try to use aluminum oxide for metal that is to be painted or coated. Using sand is a health hazard and should be a thing of the past. The type of lung cancer it can cause even has it's own name. You can always turn down the air pressure so the blast is not too aggressive. The thing to be sure of is that it is totally clean afterwards so none of the abrasive finds it's way into your engine. I would clean the surfaces to be painted after the blast with acetone or brake cleaner, then paint them right away. After that a thorough scrubing with hot water and detergent, brushing out every hole and rinsing out the water jackets. You can always give it another coat of paint after it is assembled. A trick some of the Buick guys use is to squirt shaving cream into the water jacket holes on the heads as the final step before they are set on the block for the last time. It keeps any crud that might still be in the water jackets from getting knocked loose and falling in the bore or between the head-gasket-block.

I am a professional airplane mechanic, and we use glass beads to clean up even soft aluminum and magnesium engine parts. I personally have always used fine glass beads with a reasonable pressure, and I have never experienced any peening of the metal. It can be pretty slow going, but the results are usually worth it.

If you are concerned with corrosion, make sure that the beads in your blast cabinet have only been used for the type of metal that your head is made out of; a great way to ruin an expensive airplane jug is to blast it with beads that have been used with ferrous metals.

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- Dan in Simi
'74 Dodge Dart Custom

I agree, use glass beads to clean cyl heads and such, but for Exhaust manifolds, use Garnet, it has a larger size and is best for cast iron, and sholudn't be used on alloy.

One blast media option I have had great success with is brake lathe shavings.

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Thanks for all the replys. The reason I was curious about glass thats whats in my cabinet at work. I never seen glass peen anything now steel shot thats a different matter.

Look at the difference in finish between glass beads and something abrasive. The abrasive will look matt, the glass beads will have a sheen to it. On several blueing jobs I refinished the steel parts going through finer and finer grit until a nice finish was obtained, then I bead blasted it, gives it a different finish. When I say peened, no, you wont see a whole bunch of cupped surfaces, unless you use billiard balls as media.

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Excuse me, does this smell like chloroform to you?