welcome to the bolt Tom, my thought is from the sound of it somebody won't be goin easy on ya
"bake off the paint"?? like a car that's caught fire? can't imagine a powdercoat oven being able to strip paint, the powder places use sand blasting to get the clean metal needed to do their coatings, which DO NOT use a primer - powder coating is a process of depositing a color powder on an electrically charged piece of perfectly bare metal, then melting that powder in an oven - and what does "lightly blast" mean?
epoxy priming is the way to go if you're going to leave it out, but sounds like you should find a body shop to discuss it with, especially if there's ANY rust involved
Bill
