Cab Restoration

My friend decided to have his
1948 Ford sand blasted and he was told that used sand would be used because it was safe. His sheet metal was warped and is cracking because of became brittle. The paint is bubbling even after several repaints. Who knows what residue was pounded into the sheet metal?
$500 is a screaming deal. I paid about $4000 at Redi Strip, in 1984. It would be double that amount in 2013. Hazardous waste disposal cost, I was told. Sure.

When I worked at the frame plant, I went in the door there just as processes were changing. The frames originally were dipped in a hot wax treatment--which is what that gooey stuff on the frames of lots of Ford vehicles was. For the 2002 Explorers, the frames [which we started running in January of 2001] were made from, essentially, formed heavy-gauge [up to 1/8"] sheet metal that was MIG welded from a collection of components. They were built as a front mod ["module"] and a rear mod, and those were joined at a Y in the assembly line referred to as "marriage and makeup." Once the frames were completed, they were stacked via special spacers, and stacks of 8 or 10 frames were put through an electrostatic coating process. There were several dips used; one removed the light oil coating from the frame components, another "rinsed" the frames, and then they went into the E-coat immersion bath.

http://www.clearclad.com/clearclad_resources/ecoat.htm

A German company named Eisenmann [with an American branch] set up the E-coat operation. But with the total immersion system, all of the nooks and crannies of the frames were completely coated. [The trailer hitches, which was my specialty area for a couple of years, were powdercoated on the outside; but the inside got E-coated when the rest of the frame was immersed. The powdercoat was slick enough that the flat-black E-coat didn't adhere to the outside of the hitches.]

NOW...if you could find a place with an E-coat tank large enough to immerse the cab--I think your rust worries would be gone, at least for this lifetime. And NO, I don't have any idea what E-coating an entire cab might cost.

Sandblasting has become a generic term for high pressure air propelled media. Kleenex is a good example that often refers to all nose wipe

Being in an engineering environment and around a lot of steel fabrications, the term I hear often is "media blasting". It's another, all encompassing, way of expressing the other abrasives excluding sand blasting. Media blasting consists of surface prepping metal using various abrasives such as ash from power plants, walnut shells, pecan shells, glass beads, baking soda, plastic beads, and the list is quite extensive. If it's even mildly abrasive it can be used to do a surface prep. In the right circumstance, even water can be used for media blasting. Soda blasting (baking soda) is one of the more common ways for automotive today because sand has been shown to be too damaging to automotive gauge metals. And soda is environmentally safe, can be rinsed away with water and doesn't create a disposal problem. A look in the Eastwood catalog or on their website and you can learn a lot from their offerings. If you're blasting heavier gauge metal, sand is still the most cost effective, and there are even different grades of sand at that. But for automotive blasting, if you're not going to dip it, go with soda blasting.

Nowadays, this might get to be an environmental issue, what with the release of CO2...but late in the life of the frame plant, our maintenance department found a "tool" for media blasting the robotic welding fixtures to remove the weld slag, one that left no media residue behind: the machine would "powder" dry ice, and then it was sprayed on the fixture, knocking the weld slag off into a pile which was easily shoveled up when the dry ice evaporated.

Not sure this would work for thinner sheet metal...if you could access such a machine at all these days.

Google Dry Ice blasting, you will finds lots of Information. It is used in Fire restoration, cleaning up brick facade, many other items. Do NOT understand why there would be an "environmental" impact, it is a gas that we all produce and that plants use.

Just my thoughts and what I learned when looking for a new venture to do a couple of years ago.

Lots of folks these days seem to get all worked up about CO2 releases...never understood it, because we all do it, every time we exhale.

Here in British Columbia where it is said the BC BUD comes from, blasted dry ice is the media of choice to remove the black mold that is often left behind after a Grow-op is shut down. I don't believe that there is a grow-op in the 'hood right now because we cant smell the skunk odor that is typical.
I like the name media blast rather than the old term of sand blast. I think it is important to let persons know that there are better options and all metal cleaning should not be handled the same way.
Regarding the fear of paint lifting after a chemical cleaning, it is a valid concern. While my experience with REDI-STRIP was as good as it can get, this is because they have good employees who do their jobs really well because they follow procedure. No company is any stronger than the weakest link that they have working for them.
One of the men that I used to work with was terminated for theft, and with good reason. That was a decade ago and I just got off the 'phone where I was told that he just got fired again at his new job for the same situation. I was told that he, in desperation, did the "what about those other guys" and the company took the guys he mentioned off the payroll also. Once a goof, always a goof.