Walnuts as engine cleaner.

[dan blocker]

Many years ago when I reloaded rifle bullets for stalking I used crushed walnuts in a small tumbler to clean and polish the empty cases first.

[Will C]

The classic car world uses walnut shell to blast bodywork with, apparently it doesn’t leave loads of dents like sand does. 

[Conner]

I used to work in a foundry. We had a nut blaster machine crushed wallnut shell blasted through with air like a shot blast. Didn’t erode the dies like shot. Brilliant for bike parts on night shift as alloy was too soft for the shot blast. 

[sime42]

 

Different type of walnuts.

 

@Steven P

Edited June 2 by sime42
Shoe clarification for @Steven P - not mine.

[sime42]

[aspenarb]

On 10/05/2024 at 23:33, sime42 said:

 

Has anyone heard of this practice before?

It's fair blown me away, can't quite get my head around it

 

 

 

Nothing new in this, had some engine cases blasted with crushed walnut over forty five years ago. The guy said that sand or glass blasting gets into the pores of castings and is virtually impossible to remove, on running engines its basically a grinding paste waiting to happen. Similar problems occurred with sand castings, bits of sand/slag could contaminate the oil, a lot of high end/expensive engines and gearbox castings were painted internally with red Glyptal to seal in the contamination. Not such a big deal these days with modern die and other casting techniques.

 

Bob

[Mick Dempsey]

Learn something every day.

[difflock]

On 11/05/2024 at 00:26, GarethM said:

I know a machinist guy that repairs flour equipment for mills and bakeries, for a natural product flour is like pumping sand and eats all metal for fun.

 

They do have magnets to remove the metal but yeah, I don't buy mass production bread.

A bloke I knew worked as an engineer servicing the curry factories about Brum/Bradford which churned out curry pastes by the tonne, through screw press extruders at some point in the production process. He said that the top grade picked for corrision resistance solid CNC machined Stainless Steel augers appeared to dissolve in the acidic? nature of the curry ingredients, since he knew how often he swopped them out.

I dont belive these dissolved metals are listed in the ingrediants on the label!