sandblasting?

Looking to sandblast my sliders, it has a couple coats of por15 and a couple coats of spray paint on it. I've used that black beauty coal slag for blasting them before but it's dusty stuff to work with. Has anybody had any experience with the glass beads or aluminum oxide blasting media? Locally(to me)they go for about 5 times the cost of the black beauty coal slag, just wondering if the glass beads or aluminum oxide stuff takes off the paint any easyer/faster with less mess.

I've used both medias in a blast cabinet on aircraft engine parts. The AL oxide works wonders, but is a little harsh for engine parts. Glass did great on everything but powder coated surfaces, which you have to work at. If you're not using a cabinet, I wouldn't recomend glass. It breaks up on impact and becomes EXTREMELY fine dust. I wouldn't want to breath that stuff or have to clean it up.

I used steel flakes but it was a commercial 250psi blaster!

If you are blasting out of a bucket, I would stick to sand just because it is cheaper. In a cabinet you can re-use the media and out of a bucket you lose most of it...

I've used Walnut shells in the past with great results..Cuts down on pitting and the dust...

http://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/produ...iProductID=1311

Works great also for polishing rifle and pistol brass(cases)!!!

I second the walnut shell for polishing brass.

Why don't you just use sand, which is cheap and does a nice job of cutting tough finishes like por15. por15 is self leveling anyway so any slight surface pitting from the sand will go away as soon as you paint it again.

Thanks for the comments/replies peeps. I just picked up a 100lb bag of black beauty for $10. They wanted $20 for a 25lb of glass beads, 80 grit and $39 for a 50lb bag of aluminum oxide 70 grit.
Did a quick google and found out more and more people are shying away from sand because it contains silica (hazardous to your health).
I'll be blasting out of a bucket/hopper (no cabinet), so I won't beable to recovery the media.The $10, 100lbs of black beauty seemed to make more economical sense. Thanks again for the replies.

I wear a hood and a mask, so the silica is a non issue and blast with a pressure tank blaster.

FYI Black Beauty is silicon carbide and glass beads have as much silica in them as sand and sand is still less expensive.