Blasting costs

[Possmguts]

Originally Posted by rripp

I paid $550 for all the body panels and the guy ruined every piece.

OMG!.. what did you do? I would be ready to KILL!

[Possmguts]

Some of these replies are making me skeered to have my body panels blasted or do it myself... I just might end up using my elbow grease to do the panels... out side at least and have the undersides and insides blasted where its impossible to sand. I already did a fender and most of the drivers side door, but that thing has like 5 paint jobs on it making that pretty hard to do... Im not hovering in one spot very long so Im not building up any heat.... but damn what a mess its making of the garage lol. Always damp and cold here so Im not doing it outside in the weather.

When I did my 70 Lemans I used chemical stripper and that was just too messy to clean up. When I painted my 70 Nova, it was all ready to go when I bought it. So this is really the first time Ive gone through the effort of doing it this way.

The frame is still getting blasted though. Maybe going to PC it, not sure yet.

[snipescastle2]

the whole idea is not to "Dwell" or spend too much time in the same spot, blasting is like shooting millions of tiny ball peen hammers on your sheet metal.
Thus generating heat-warping, not to mention blowing holes in your panels.
the finer the abrasive, and less dwell time will work, but it will increase the amount of work to strip off the paint/primer/rust. some people use a combination of media's- Glass beads/walnut shell/aluminum oxide to achieve the finish they are looking for. We use glass beads and aluminum oxide in our glove box sand blaster here at my work, I used this for almost all my smaller parts and the profile is very smooth and you can still see details like fine number stampings,etc....even after powder coating these parts, you can still see the stampings/marks! I also used baking soda to blast the interior of my cab, or a majority of it, the neat thing about baking soda is, you can see the factory spot welds plain as day (discolored weld marks) you just have to get rid of all the baking soda media and wash the hell out of it, and prep the metal for priming thoroughly. I found that using a 4 1/2" wire wheel on an angle grinder removes paint rather well, it's time consuming, but gets most of the paint/primer off. Unless you find a shop that has done this kind of work for many years, I'd be more inclined to do it myself, rather than let someone loose that's gonna swiss cheese my panels........you just have to start with a small area and experiment with your blasting pressures/media delivery rate to get the results you want.
Hope this helps!
Ben

[Aruba1]

Someone told me that blasting body panels is a bad idea but that is all I know. You can use a grinder and Polycarbide Abrasive Wheel. It does magic. On my 1972 hood, I have tried to weeks to sand it to bare metal with a knotted wire wheel disk and 80 grit disk pads with no luck. With the polycarbide wheel I did the whole hood in less than 90 minutes to shiney bare metal. I was so happy with the results that I did under the hood also, both front fenders and some parts of the doors and cab and still had some meat left on the abrasive wheel. They cost about $5 and 3x should do the whole car. Probably it will take you a whole day or two, depending how quick you are. I bought mine from HF but it can be found at most other places (no affliliation to HF, lol) http://www.harborfreight.com/4-1-2-h...eel-94017.html

[snipescastle2]

we call those "Bionic Pubic Hairs" sorry, couldn't resist
Ben

[oldchevynut]

Ben and Jason, Thank you for the information, that does help greatly. The price of crushed glass is about double in my area but perhaps the virgin vs. recycled material is the explanation. One more thing to check into! Randy.

[Cash3481]

I have had 3-4 frames and suspension parts blasted and the local place does a great job and charged me $200 for the entire trailer full of stuff. If you go to the miss represented thread (in my signature) it's on the first or 2nd page.