Hey guys,

First post.

Was curious what you guys think is more efficient and better for stripping paint?

Plastic Media Blasting - like sand blasting but using plastic

or

Traditional Sanding

and why you feel that way?

I'm looking into various equipment for a future shop, and would like to see if the PMB would justify it's cost in it's efficiency, which is something i love.

Thanks in advanced guys!

O

Also, Chemical Stripping.

What are you stripping?

Well i'm not stripping anything

I'm actually conducting research, trying to gather various info/best practicies for a possible Future business i'm thinking about starting.

But i'd say we would be stripping mainly car/motorcycle body parts. I can't seem to think of anything else that would be needed to strip.

I know that the traditional stripping take a lot of time and effort and man power, i'd like to get the most out of time, buy adapting the most efficient method of stripping vehicles and prep them for paint.

thanks

Sorry, double post.

Well, hello to a fellow future stripper. Honestly about 1/3 of our furniture restoration business is wood and metal stripping. We even occassionly do metal car parts, golf ball washers, bike parts, etc. As for your first question sand blasting on cars around here isn't done much anymore. Deformable plastic media blasting is the norm on most restoration work. It doesn't stress the metal as much and can blow carefully through each layer and doesn't leave fine sand dust blowing around inside your car or truck for years. As for chemical stripping it's a mixed bag especially if the car has hidden cavities that are hard to drain, properly neutralize, and bake clean. Then there is the issue of disposal which leads you directly to your local EPA. If you are doing cars and trucks you will probably be a Large Quanitity Generator of Hazardous Waste, required to log your waste disposal and either re-generate your waste water or dispose of it too. Many years ago (about 20 or so) I used to feel that car chemical stripping operations could be very profitable and we had at least two in this area but I think with the current environmental concerns I would definitely go with a media blasting set-up maybe offering several different media options. That would give you a way to offer services and only keep those medias that sell for you in your area. Oh, by the way through very careful waste management on our part the EPA rates us as a Conditionally Exempt Small Quanitiy Generator which keeps us profitable.

Question about that media blasting. Years ago, I used to spend days on end sand blasting old wrought iron furniture for restoration. It was a really labor intensive job. With this deforming plastic media, would the same job take muck longer? Also, you mentioned wood. Can you strip paint off wood with this media. I used to sandblast wood signs, and all I had to do was a couple quick passes over the sign and it took off half an inch. This is an interesting topic.

Good questions. The plastic blasting, from demonstrations I've seen in person and in video, is less agressive and seems to blow quickly at one or two layers at a time. Regular sand blasting is quicker and some newer metalized blasting media and molten salt soaking is supposed to be the fastest. I don't know of anyone currently using the plastic media method on wood. I guess you would just have to buy some and play around with it. I know what you mean about the regular sandblasting and wood. It blows through the soft areas in a heartbeat. As for your comments on the wrought iron furniture. The fastest way to strip both wrought and cast today is by chemcial soak in what we call "warm tank" strippers. These newer metisillicate compounds operate at 80 to 120 degrees and rapidly dissovle layers. We can soak even the fancy "grapevine" style outdoor furniture and have it clean, prepped with an anti-rust flash compound and in the drying room in less than 30 minutes. I agree, paint removal can be an interesting subject. I guess that's what has kept me in our biz all these years.

That's great stuff.

Well the stripping will only be on aspect of the business. And i was area of the EPA concerns with Chemical Striping, and wanted to stay far from that route.

Plus i like that the plastic media is reusable.

I think in the long run it will be worth it.

But i was more interested in Media Blasting as aopposed to regular Hand stripping? I know it most be more efficient, but does it justify investing around $30,000 to get the Plastic Media Blaster setup i'm looking at over having guys strip cars? What u guys think?

I think it's going to depend on your ovrerall volume. You might start by doing hand stripping and when you hit a pre-determined constant level of demand for it try and figure a payoff period for your new stripping system. From that payoff point on you are going to have minimal labor and materials costs for owning that system. You could also do what I first did when learning about furniture stripping systems. I would go and see the systems demonstrated, make notes and drawings when I got back to my motel room, then build my own equipment that was more tailored to my operations for about 1/10th the cost. I saw many systems demonstrated that were up to $30,000 in cost at the time (this was 25 years ago) and built my first tank/flow over based system for about $2500. It paid for itself in the first 3 months of operation.