Blasting beet, potato and row-crop equipment around Taber

Irrigated row-crop country around Taber is hard on steel. Sugar beets, potatoes and corn come out of the ground with soil, water and grit attached, and the equipment that handles them wears its coating off from the inside out.

Where the coating goes first

• Conveyors and elevators — anywhere wet product slides across steel.
• Hoppers and bin sections, where moisture sits after the last load.
• Frames and crossmembers under the working parts, where mud packs in and stays wet.
• Welds and seams, which rust first on every machine we see.

Rust on row-crop equipment rarely starts where you can see it. It starts where the dirt sits.

The window is after harvest

Once the crop is in, most of this equipment is parked until spring. That is the only stretch where stripping and recoating it costs nothing in working days. Book it after harvest and it goes back out with clean steel and fresh paint instead of another year of scale. The reasoning is laid out in the best time to blast farm equipment is when it is parked.

We come to the yard

Most of this gear does not road well and is not worth a float bill. The rig carries its own compressor, pot, media and water, so we set up on your ground near Taber, work off it, and collect the spent media before we leave.

Taber is inside our 200 km radius from Medicine Hat. If neighbours along the same road have equipment that needs doing, lining jobs up on the same trip is the sensible way to book it.

Clean first, then blast

Caked soil and crop residue slow a blast down. Knocking the worst of it off before we arrive shortens the job — see what to have ready before we arrive.