Curious question. I did a fresh re-install of the blast off folder, and started the new map. When running through, you end up getting the engineer's book for the Eureka mod stuff, and I cannot seem to get the basic duster to work to progress in this book. Is this expected? If it's supposed to work, is this possibly due to the ore being 'hardened ore' since the world is hardened clay? The duster is supposed to work with 8 jumps, however I've stood there jumping more times than I can count with no effect.
Use vanilla ores (you can put the hardended ores with 2000mb of lava in a vat, wait 120seconds and it will become a regular vanilla ore), or you can also dust stuffs like stone and cobblestone to get sand\gravel.
also ardite\cobalt ores work as well.