Readying The Car For Primer, Repairs And The Custom Sheetmetal Work
By Steve Campbell Photography: Steve Campbel
’39 Ford Tudor sedan.
In any project buildup, proper paint is crucial to the appeal of the
finished product, and a good paint job begins with the thorough preparation
of the vehicle’s surface. In some instances, original factory paint that has
been correctly roughed is an excellent base for laying on new color and
graphics. In other cases, however, it’s best to remove all of the old
paint—sometimes many layers of it—to evaluate the soundness of the
underlying steel, to determine what bodywork should or must be done and to
spray a newly primed foundation for fresh colors. That’s particularly true
of cars that have been painted several times as well as those like this car
55 years of history hidden under their pigment.
Our ’39 has received a new Bitchin Products firewall, dash and floor,
Resurrection Soda Blasting specializes in the clean and safe removal of old
paint. Resurrection Soda Blasting utilizes a high-pressure blasting method
to strip cars and trucks to bare metal, but the blasting medium is either
baking soda or a combination of baking soda and slightly more aggressive
media for heavy-duty cleanups such as deep rust pockets.
The basic blasting medium used by Resurrection
Soda Blasting sodium bicarbonate—also known as baking soda. In
addition to being a marvelous stripping agent, it’s biodegradable.
Baking-soda blasting strips only paint from the car, leaving
all rubber, glass and chrome unaffected. Body filler is also unaffected by
the process, so previously repaired areas may be evaluated after stripping
and either left intact or reworked. If desired, Resurrection
Soda Blasting can also strip the filler.
Baking soda also offers post stripping benefits. Paint components can be
separated from the medium and, because it is biodegradable, the residual
baking-soda medium can simply be washed away without fear of harm to the
environment. In addition, baking soda acts as a rust inhibitor, so the
vehicle can sit coated in the blasting medium for a reasonable period of
time after stripping without the formation of new surface rust.
Resurrection Soda Blasting stripped the ’39 to bare metal in
only a few hours. The same results, if done by hand with abrasives, would
take days and require extremely meticulous detail work around body creases
and seams. At the end of its stay in the blasting booth, the car was ready
for primer, any needed repairs and the custom sheet metal touches we had
planned.
The blast technician makes smooth passes with the blasting nozzle to
remove all of the old paint yet do no harm to any of a car’s remaining
rubber, glass, chrome or even existing body filler.
