Media Blasting dilemma...

[kwells]

Ok so I completely removed the interior and parts of the exterior of my '65 (fenders, doors, bonnet, seat box, floor pans, dash pieces, etc) and brought them to a media blaster to have them stripped and prepped for paint. He calls this morning and said with the plastic media on the lowest setting possible (30 psi) it still distorted a small area of the seatbox and so he stopped and told me it would distort all the panels if he did any more. He recommended taking the parts to a soda blaster but warned me that I may have a hard time with the paint after because of the neutral nature of the soda and the acidic nature of paint. I do not have time to strip and sand every part. What can I do to get these parts refinished??? Is the soda the answer?? Will a place dunk them in a chemical to strip?? clueless and frustrated... :gulp:

[giftshopduane]

I had a hood stripped with soda. It came out nicely. No issues with adhesion. I may be wrong but I thought the Bermabright had that nice anodized (?) primer, it would be nice to salvage it. At least that's my understanding, but many a times I've been wrong. Otherwise stick with soda.

[superstator]

Nitpick - soda is basic, not neutral ;).

There is a TON of debate out there about soda blasting and paint. My sense of it is it's fine as long as you do a good job of cleaning and neutralizing after blasting, but often the whole exercise is unneeded. If the existing paint is adhering well enough that you need to blast it off with media, it's probably adhering well enough to just paint over as is.

[kwells]

Nitpick - soda is basic, not neutral ;).

There is a TON of debate out there about soda blasting and paint. My sense of it is it's fine as long as you do a good job of cleaning and neutralizing after blasting, but often the whole exercise is unneeded. If the existing paint is adhering well enough that you need to blast it off with media, it's probably adhering well enough to just paint over as is.

Not about getting the paint off, I just want a perfect new surface so the paint comes out better, FYI its being painted with IMRON so I dont think the adhesion will be an issue. And because Im doing the entire interior it is just wayyy too much labor to sit there and sand each individual piece. I dropped all the parts off at the soda blaster today so well see how it goes.