Media Blasting and Stripping

Media blasting is a high pressure removal process that combines compressed air with a corncob or glass blasting media to produce a very efficient and, more importantly, a dry log stripping process. The blasting process removes all of the old stain, allows the grain of the log to open and be more receptive to staining.

Over the past couple of years, we've been using a glass bead media stripping agent and have found it to be even more effective and less time consuming than the corncob media. We have moved almost exclusively to the glass media for our full restoration projects. Both the corn and glass mediums are environmentally safe. We conduct an extensive job site clean-up and do our best to insure that there's no material residue when we're done.

Despite the description, the blasting (either corn or glass) process, if done properly, will not damage the exterior of the logs. In fact, if you compare blasting to the chemical stripping method, you'll find that any injection of moisture into logs is a disaster waiting to happen. Our experience has proven that dry logs are healthy logs and driving water into the logs only advances the opportunity for rot to take hold.

If the restoration process requires the removal of the chink or caulking, we do that ahead of the blasting to insure that all surface areas are new and highly receptive to stain. Pest treatments, such as borate, are applied after the log buffing is completed.

Also, we take special care with exposed log ends to make sure they are effectively refinished and protected from moisture and pests.

Once the logs have been stripped, we buff each log using a specially designed buffing tool called an Osborn (trademark) brush (see photo at right). The “Ozzies” are designed to remove any of the wood fibers raised from blasting procedure to leave the surface smooth yet porous enough to accept the application of the finish stain. As with any finish restoration, we believe that the quality of the final results truly rest with our adherence to a stringent preparation process.