I just completed stripping down the 2 sides and front of the bed for my 54 3100. This was a bed I located at a salvage yard and had shipped to me. My project truck had a home made flat bed and I wanted to put an original bed back on it. The bed parts were covered with about 50% original paint and the rest was heavy surface rust. I discovered a two step approach worked best. I used a random orbital sander with coarse paper. I hooked it up to my shop vac and there was virtually no dust. This did a great job removing the paint down to the bare metal quickly but worked very slowly trying to remove rust. I did change sanding disc frequently. After removing the paint I switched to an angle grinder with a cup knotted wire brush installed. This did a great job removing the surface rust down to the bare metal but struggled on painted areas. I had a total of about 3 hours invested in each of the 3 pieces. I thought this was pretty quick for stripping paint and rust. As stated above, there are multiple approaches, so experiment with different methods before investing a lot of time on any one. The two step approach worked great for me for a combination of paint and rust removal.
