Sandblasting Question.

[67fordkc]

According to what I have read and been told by the guy who is going to do mine, soda blasting will not warp the metal. They say you can leave your chrome and glass in. Here is a web site that talks about it www.sodablasting.com

[Banjo]

I had an entire car sandblasted to make SURE no rust came back (had floorpans and trunkpan and some bottom panels patched). Based on advice of bodyman, I used aircraft stripper and semi-flexible putty knife and spent about 2 weekends spreading stripper on with paint brush and waiting for it to work and skimming it off with putty knife and scraping old lacquer residue into old paint buckets for disposal. Not really hard, did in the heat of summer under shade tree, sitting on 5 gallon bucket. Then, I wiped down whole car with lacquer thinner on rags a few times. THEN I had whole car sandblasted for $500 from an experienced old guy who restores cars. He still wouldn't do the hood for fear of warpage.
Why did I remove all paint/filler by hand only to have it sandblasted? Because if you have rust, it can get into pits (black rust) only to return. And, that I didn't want and my car did have rust. By removing old lacquer first, blaster can get on and off quickly (reducing chance for warpage), and warpage opportunity gets greater with longer flatter metal unsupported in middle. However, given the gauge of metal on old Fords, if someone knew how to control it, I'd think the whole truck could be done just fine. My car was a Chevy II and they are much thinner gauge, in my opinion. And, it's true, that like welding anywhere the metal is thin, it's going to blow out. Once you're done with sandblasting, whole thing needs to be epoxy primed to prevent rust from starting over after it's blow out with compressed air over and over....and over.....and over.....and over....and you'll still find sand dropping out for quite awhile! Banjo.

[averagef250]

That's a real good point Banjo. Sandblasting eats through rust in no time, but paint is a completely different story. Sandblasting basically beats paint off the metal, it doesn't really cut through it like with rust. Paint takes a lot longer to remove than rust does, especially when there are many layers of old paint.

A big benefit to sandblasting over soda and media blasting is when you're done the metal is prepped for paint the best it can possibly be. If you clean it extremely well and use good epoxy primer right away you'll never have rust issues again.