Wow... I never thought this question would get so many responses! Thank you for all the suggestions and ideas! My town does have a hazardous waste program that I will see if I can despose of the waste there. For the time being the waste is sitting in sealed buckets in the garage (it's too cold out to work in there right now anyways).
As for how I blasted the cab... I pulled the cab off of the chassis and made a wood jig with casters for it to sit on. I made a plastic blasting booth inside the garage by hanging 4 2x4s in a square from the ceiling, then draping/stapling plastic over the top and from the sides. For the blasting I used my Craftsman 2HP 30 gallon compressor (rated at 6.5 or so CFM at 90psi) hooked up to the Clarke 20 gallon pressurized pot blaster I bought. I ran the compressor and blaster at around 90psi and while the compressor would run nearly non-stop (I had to take breaks every 10 minutes or so to let the compressor catch up) it got the job done, and quite well. I used fine grit black beauty blasting media that I picked up from a local hardware store for about $13 per 100lbs bag. I was told on my '55 2nd series that the only section you needed to be concerned about blasting was the roof, so I blasted everything (inside and out) and left the roof alone to sand later (inside as well as outside). As far as I can tell there is no sign of any of the metal warping. The next step is I want to mock up the cab and fenders on the chassis to make sure things are aligning correctly before I weld in any of the patch panels.
A few things I learned during this process...
1. use thicker that 4mil plastic for walls (you can blow through it with the sand blasting, and I did in a couple of spots)
2. using anything more coarse than fine grit clogged the Clarke blaster (I used fine grit for the majority of the cab, then extra fine at the end because the hardware store ran out of the fine. The extra fine worked okay, but it took a bit longer and used up a lot more blasting media)
3. Find or rent a larger compressor with a greater CFM rating, or at least find an extra tank or two to tie into the system for reserve air. While the compressor running constantly wasn't a huge issue, I found once the compressor kicked on the moisture had a tendency to pass through the filter and into the sandblaster (I was running two filters... one on the tank and one on the blaster itself)
4. Buy extra face masks. The plastic insert was extremely hard to see through after a good 30-45 minutes of blasting.
5. Primer the cab as soon as you can when you are done. I made the mistake of not getting any primer before hand and may have to blast certain spots again where surface rust has started to form (it's been about 2 weeks now).
I'm very happy with the way the cab came out but it definitely took a little bit of time (not nearly as long as sanding it or wire brushing it would take though). I was certain to wear a resperator, ear plugs, face mask, and cover every inch of skin with clothing while I was blasting. I figured if I was going to have to spend $600 to send the cab out to be blasted I could spend at least up to that much getting the equipment myself and having the experience and satisfaction of doing it myself. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to post pictures I'd be happy to do so. Good luck!
~Neil
