I work for an site (not as an affiliate), I've already gone through most of the white hat channels, thinking about toying around with blackhat techniques. could I get our main site banned, if I created a blog and promote it with blackhat?
probably if it is on the same URL. If you have a different URL and IP, you should be okay for the most part but you'd be doing this at your own risk of course.
If it is a different url and as long as you do not interlink them, you should be fine. If you want to use BH teck Make sure your registration details is different than your original url..
Just don't linked to black hat site from your main site and your site should be fine. You cannot control who linked to you but you can control who you're linked to.
I was thinking of maybe using blogger or wordpress. wouldn't it make more sense to use a blog host to do blackhat stuff since most blackhat sites don't last that long?
That would be okay but what if your black hat stuff actually works? Then you can't sell the domain as easily as if it were your own. But it would be cheaper to do it this way your fist time around to test out your techniques. Let us know how it goes.