Not having done a full restoration before I was on the learning curve to about metal cleaning. I found a local dustless blasting company (hour and half away). Watch the dustless blasting video with the company with the bright green equipment for more details.
These are my thoughts on dustless blasting:
1. It is cheaper then chemical metal stripping, but not as complete. 2. The metal still has a texture (it has minor pitting) that you have to overcome with more primer than, none of mine parts came back warped. 3. Your parts will have some sand/glass medium in the cracks and corners so you have to clean/prep carefully 4. If the blaster did not do a good enough job you may have some fine tuning to do yourself
Quoting prices might not be good etiquette, but may be helpful to others considering it. I am sure prices vary and nobody gives me a deal. I think I paid $350 for the entire bed to be blasted. And $900 to have the entire rolling chassis blasted, epoxy primed and painted in chassis flat black paint.
TUTS 59 question leads in to my next part of the project. I had the cab, doors and hood acid dipped last summer. I struggled to find a replacement cab that did not need near as much work as mine. So I decided to get mine dipped and go into the deep end buying replacement sheet metal.
See the before and after photos.
Metal Cleaning/Acid Dipping:
1. It is more expense 2. It is 100% complete 3. Not many places that do it, I was lucky to have a local company (an hour and a half away) that has been doing for 20 plus years (a company near Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 4. There is no guessing about what you have left and where the rust was
Dipping the cab cost about $800, doors and hood were $125 or so each. It was cheaper just a few years ago. But, well worth the cost, it felt great to finally have a rust free truck.
I now have all the replacement sheet metal and need to tackle the cab repair.
