how long did it take you all who sandblasted or had your cab sandblasted? I found a place that does it for 40 and hour and i couls do it myself...just considering options

 

Do it your self.. The cost can be sky high real fast.. And U will have more pride if U do it yourself anyway..

 

What kind of equipment do you have? How many coats of paint do you think are on your truck? Time can really vary. Real good equipment can make short work of light rust and decades old lacquer. Two stage compressor and a pressurized blaster will do it in a few hours perhaps. It could be done faster with professional equipment, but you risk damaging the metal. Uncatalyzed enamels (soft) and an air compressor that can't keep up can make it quite time consuming.

I'm a DIY guy, though my equipment really extended the blasting time.

 

Just a thought here, But My Chiltons Crash Book on a 2003 F150 gives me 22.5 hrs to strip a complete Cab for repainting.. @ $40 a hr that would be $900.00

 

That's apples and oranges Mad. I could be wrong, but I don't think he's taking his Effie cab to them fully assembled. And I'm not suggesting he's gonna get it done for a hundred bucks. But it's not going to be anywhere close to $900 either. I'd have them pinned down to a fairly tight price range before I agreed to anything. They'll want to see it first I'm sure.

 

Dude.. Thats on a bare cab.. There a lot of nooks and crannies to get to in a cab.. Thats for inside and out top to bottem

 

I did my and i have use 1200 pounds of sand and just bought 3 hundered more pounds so at 10.95 per bag 186.15 ,i hate 100 pound bag

 

I started to do a project like this on my own (it was a mustang) and I ended up having a sandblasting company do it all over for me. I didn't have to burn out my compressor, clean up the mess, spend several days doing it, breath all the dust, buy the protective gear, buy and hump all that grit, and this company was an industrial blaster. They had the pressure and volume to do it right, They also primed the bare metal.

I guess you are asking how long it would take youself to do it. Think of a time and then double it atleast.
My 2 cents

 

if i do it myself it will be at school. there is a 90lb capacity pressure pot blaster that has never been used. the school got it becaus eme and another guy in my class have been blasting alot of stuff. so we have a pretty heavy duty compressor. i'll be doing it outside so i wont really have to worry about clean up....and i really need to do my hood and doors as well....how much sand do you all think it will take? oh and the only paint that is still on it is on the inside of the doors. jambs and back of the cab. the rest is surface rust

 

Blast a door. Then you will have a very good idea how long it will take with your equipment. Surface rust will blast off quickly. Heavy rust will not.

I've blasted every inch of several vehicles. An entire 31 Chevy sedan, inside and out in about 4 hours with the right equipment I rented. (Ingersol Rand 4 cylinder compressor).

My truck took days with my single stage compressor. Frame only took an hour or so because it was not rusty. Inside of cab was quick too. Exterior sheetmetal had a lot of soft enamel on it and went VERY slow. Easily an hour per panel.

 

Sand or abrasive grit is not the proper media for paint blasting. It eats away metal as well as paint and peen hardens the surface making body work difficult. A blaster that truly knows what they are doing will use a soft media like walnut shells and plastic to remove paint. You DEFINITELY don't want to use play sand unless you have a filtered forced air hood, Silicosis KILLS! Paint stripper is a much better alternative with spot blasting to remove rust if you must do it yourself.

 

Above all be VERY careful with the aggressiveness of the sandblaster used. Yes large equipment will work faster however it can warp your sheetmetal parts.

 

why not use paint stripper and a pressure washer it may take some time but alot of that would be waiting for the stripper to do its work.

 

Nixer

Sometimes paint stripper is a great solution. Though I recommend you make sure you don't have any stripper on your hands before you use the restroom. Double check when you remove your gloves, even a little drop is most unpleasant.

Seriously, I have used stripper a number of times. Sometimes it's the cats meow. Then the next time you hit some good oven baked factory primer and you got as mess you wish you had blasted. Can you say 8 coats of stripper and putty knife the entire car. There is no perfect solution for every situation. Stripper is worthless on rust. I've seen some pros use the four guys on a DA sander method to strip. That has drawbacks as well.

Anybody that thinks they have the perfect single lowbuck solution that is optimum in every situation is having a fantasy.

 

If you use stripper, buy a good aircraft stripper, not the stuff they sell in the paint dept of your local hardware store.