The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Progress report (Hood stripping)

So today I burned a vacation day from work, and spent it in the most relaxing way I chould think of, workin on the 53. I went crazy a few weeks ago and took everything from the firewall forward off the truck to do the much needed body work and cleanup I've wanted to do for a while. Today consisted mostly of working on the hood. At my buddy Jerry's shop, Jerry is the official paint and body guy for Mongo's Garage. We chemical stripped the paint off the hood and used a DA sander to smooth it out and remove the remaining paint. Hopefully the rest of this weekend will consist of wrapping up the little bit of body work that's neccesary, and getting some primer on it till I figure out what color it's gonna be.
Here's the obligatory progress pics..
Hard at work on the inside of the hood.
Hood 1
Hood 2

One question I had that I thought I'd toss out here.. The reinforcing piece that runs along the inside of the hood near the back, between the places the hinges attach. My truck had pieces of old inner tube cut up and wedged between it and the inside of the hood I'm guessing this acted as a vibration dampener. My other buddies 54 had pieces of wood wedged into it and Jerry's had nothing. So what have you guys used in this space? I'm thinking of getting some thick strips of rubber, thicker than the old tire rubber and cutting them to fit, but I thought I'd see what everyone else did.
MONGO

Mongo
Looking good. It is always nice to get down to bare metal, especiaily when you polish it up nice and shinny with the DA. What stripper did you use? When I did my cab I used Tal Strip.(what a toxic mess)It worked good though

The stuff we're using is called Jet Strip $21 at O'reillys it looks like wallpaper paste, but sure does eat the paint right off. I went the chemical stripper route because my hood was in pretty good shape and I didn't want to risk a blaster warping it. I did take the inner fenders and some other (Thicker) pieces over to a place that does media (No Sand) blasting and I can't believe how good those pieces came out. We went right to primer with the inner fenders without having to do any other prep work. That blaster uses stuff call Starblast from 3M the owner of the place says that the Starblast is alot smaller and sharper than sand which is why it leaves such a smooth finish. I'll be taking some more of my hard to strip pieces over to him.
MONGO

Mongo
The stuff I used must be the same as it is aircraft paint remover. Boy is it toxic, I wore gloves and a resporator with that stuff. I had most of my parts dipped at redi strip. The cab I decided to strip myself because I was worried about the water rinse after getting in between the pinch welds. Well after many hours of stripping sanding and polising we ended up using a metal prep that had to be rinsced with water. I will defenetly pay the 800 bucks to have the next one dipped(Time is money)