It's been a minute since we've checked in with what the good folks at Brick House Builds are up to, but just because it's winter definitely doesn't mean they're not hard at work. And if you, like me, are the kind of person who has been absolutely glued to a screen whenever someone shows you how crayons are made, or how wood furniture is tooled, or how utterly satisfying it is to perfectly clean the grime off of engine parts, then you'll definitely want to strap in for this video.
The satisfaction of cleaning something up yourself can't be matched, full stop. No matter how much time, blood, sweat, elbow grease, and/or questionable chemicals you've had to put into getting it into a state that meets your approval, it's generally worth it by the end. Even if you had to swear a lot (and maybe especially if you had to swear a lot) to get there. And it doesn't matter what method you're using to do the thing; Heck, taking a dingle-ball hone to the single cylinder on my scooter and bringing it back (without having to bore it out) was just an absolute joy. I highly recommend it if you get the chance!
But when you're not doing it yourself, the next best thing is watching someone else do it. And in some ways, that might even be more satisfying and/or instructive, because you can really concentrate on what someone else is doing instead of constantly distracting yourself with thinking about what your next steps in your particular process journey are going to be.
With that in mind, the BHB folks just shared this video showing the process of various parts of a Honda CB750 engine getting dry ice blasted by a trusted local business in the area, and it's so cool to see up close. Like other forms of blasting, dry ice can target the grime and ick in even tiny little crevices that are otherwise difficult to reach. But unlike media blasting, the cool part here is that it doesn't introduce even tiny pieces of grit that you'll need to deal with removing later (or need to carefully mask off places you don't want it to get, and then hope you did a good enough job that it stays out of those places).
It's cool to see, and for a certain type of person (namely, me), it's also pretty soothing content. If you're an Internet ancient like myself, you may remember a trend on TikTok a million years ago where everyone was cleaning everything in sight, and you could literally just scroll and see folks scrubbing the grout in their tile until it glistened. It was oddly satisfying to watch, because who doesn't like their stuff to be really clean, especially if it's stuff they interact with every day?
This is kind of like that, too, only it's vintage motorcycle engine parts, so it's kind of even more impressive because depending on the bike, we could be watching 50-plus years of grime get washed away with far fewer than 50 years of effort.
If you're curious about what parts this process is best for, be sure to watch the entire video (it's only 12 minutes, so it's not super long) to see how various bits came up after this cleaning. It's also interesting to note that the blasting power of dry ice used here can apparently be attenuated, so it can be harsher or gentler depending on what's needed for a given application. Definitely something to keep in mind if you look into this type of service for your next project!
