I need to strip my 47 Ford to bare metal. Sanding is time consuming and dirty, dustless blasting seems expensive, and dry ice blasting seems the best but I’m having difficulty finding a source to get a price. I live in Cincinnati. What are opinions out there? Thanks.
The easiest way is to open your billfold and pay the dustless blasting people. I've always chemical stripped, because i hate dealing with the residual sand from sandblasting, but these days the paint stripper sucks donkey ass.
Everything I've seen or read about dustless blasting is it's much less messy than conventional sandblasting and more 'controllable' as to where it goes too.
as miserable of a job it is, stick with sanding - need to minimize the amount of products that get into areas that you will never get it out of - once the painting begins all it takes is one pocket of blasting bead, etc to be disturbed and fly into paint - ask guys that have gone to Bonneville and had their car/truck rust from the inside out how impossible cleaning off salt is - similar to pressure cleaning residual
I agree with Fortunateson. Find a slow RPM grinder / polisher and purchase a 8” 3M Stikit pad with 80 grit paper. Be careful on edges and peaks. Start away from anything you will destroy and in time you will get the hang of it. If you run into Bondo and it’s still performing leave it . Use a smaller device to get close to important things.
I've used a heat gun on a couple of my cars (the Nash in my profile was one of them) to remove all the old paint, just don't get the panel too hot (watch for the paint to blister slightly) then use a good sharp scraper/chisel. Didn't take too long, from memory a couple of days.. (Hell, with a bit of practice, you can scrape with one hand, and heat with the other at the same time) Then finished off with an orbital sander to get rid of the remains of original primer traces, and bring it back to the all metal look.. A couple of times the panel got a bit hot and bulged, but when it cooled, it went back in to shape, with no sign of damage..
Im a dustless blaster, and I just did a 1970 split bumper Camaro body. It took about 5 hours and done. As a painter I understand the sand in spots, but I would rather spend the time cleaning sand rather than sanding. Yes I know that this is not the Camaro. This is a 1938 dodge cab.
Buy a 50 dollar Wen variable speed polisher online, get a hook and loop backer pad and a handful of 80 grit discs. Start on larger flattish areas until you get the hang of it before you work around body lines and profiles. You will remove a lot of paint in a day. Worked for me.
The big question is what does it cost for you to come strip a car? And cleanup wise, I'm not talking about the dustless process, I'm talking about the old school sandblasting. I have 2 in my shop at the moment that have been sandblasted, and it's a mess. Plus whoever did the work destroyed a lot of good sheetmetal.
I've stripped my last three cars using Easy Strip discs on my 4.5" angle grinder. Two discs will easily do it, and barely get into the 2nd disc, unless it's multiple coats of paint. And in around 4-5 hrs. with ease. I love them. And they're easy on the metal, so no overheating, or too much metal removed as there is with sanding discs, or flapper discs. https://www.empireabrasives.com/4-1...cZJCHo0lcUStfkhJq0DY7p3k6z1_KVUhoCji8QAvD_BwE
Ive used the strip it disks like above and also used a flat twisted wire wheel on a 4.5 inch grinder with great results as well. Less than 30 bucks and four or five hours ought to have you done.
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