The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Surface rust removal on my 1956 3100

I'm not sure how many of you have tackled this, but thought I would get your ideas. I acquired this 1956 Chevy 3100 this past summer. I have begun restoration such as removing hood, grill and one fender to start sanding. Although the body is in great shape there is SO MUCH surface rust I am finding the sanding (80, 150 and 200 grit) to be pretty tiresome. I have used OSPHOS solution many times before on another restoration project that supposedly turns rust back into metal, but you really need to knock all the heavy rust off first. I'm thinking there ought to be some type of solution to spray on, let set, power spray off then prime? Sand/media blasting is out as there are NO close operations.

Any ideas or possible solutions would be greatly appreciated.

You may want to try a evaporust type gel .I have used evaporust type removers on parts that you can put in a bucket but I think there is a gel or I heard of putting paper towel over the part and keeping it wet with the product.might be a option before you use the rust encapsulater.

Are you using power tools or hand sanding (which would indeed be tiresome - but you'd have some serious guns afterward ;)) to remove the heavy rust? Eastwood has a tool that's supposedly pretty good at removing rust, but I haven't used one. I have used an angle grinder with a flap disk on it, and it has taken me only about an hour to strip an entire front fender.
Like Kevinski suggested, Evaporust is a good product. Use a towel to keep it wet so it can work. I've tried their gel product but with so-so results.

Try a DA with 40-60 grit, followed by 120 grit. That'll leave a great surface for epoxy primer to grab on to and leave the primered finish looking smooth.

I have one of those Eastwood Contour stripping tools and they do work great. However, if there any deeper rust pock marks, it will not remove them. On those, I used a stiff wire wheel mounted on an angle grinder, then followed it up with epoxy. Evaporust would be an option also.

No sander will get pits cleaned out. A wire wheel does better, but even that's not 100%. Sandblasting is the only real way to clean out pits completely.

On my deepest pits, I have a hand held sand blaster that I used to take care of that. Fortunately there were only a few areas.

The real question is, how long do you want this paint job to last? Rust on flat surfaces can be addressed by sanding, but what a about the seams where adjoining panels meet? You can't get in there with sandpaper and using chemicals in these seams will leave residual nastiness that will come back to haunt you even with epoxy primer on top of it.
Sandblasting is the best solution for removing rust so that epoxy primer can do its job.