Sandblasting is one of the most effective to remove rust from a project vehicle like mine. Sandblasting will help you discover problems and fix them. We all need an occasional sand blasting. But that topic would be a serious digression. Let’s talk about sand blasting the old Dodge pickup.

There are dangers with this process and potential drawbacks to consider. The sandblasting process is aggressive and takes away everything down to bare metal.  Ralph had already taken the truck apart–most parts that could be unbolted were off. Sometimes the whole cab is sandblasted lightly to expose hidden and rusted fasteners. Sandblasting is usually done with ordinary clean dry sand under great pressure. Like a water hose except that a violent wind of sand comes out instead of water. Sand blasting will heat flat metal panels, which could cause them to warp. Warpage from sandblasting can ruin a panel beyond use. Blasting hoods, roofs, deck lids, and large flat areas have the most potential for warping. Ralph has done this a thousand times and knows the process well. Sadly, for him it was also done out in the cold. Other media than sand can be used for more delicate parts and thiner metal. Walnut shells are often used as the blasting medium when there is concern for the integrity of old metal parts.

Although sandblasting is effective, you must be prepared for hidden problems it may reveal. Like taking the clothes off the emperor—will we like what we find? I was under no illusions that a prince was hiding just below all the surface rust. Just when you think you have a solid project car, blast the entire thing and you discover a lot more work for yourself. Sandblasting removes all dirt, rust and paint so what you thought was just a surface rust might actually be riddled with pinholes. We didn’t find many of these. There was still a lot of repairable metal there. Old cars like this old Dodge had thicker metal than used today—much thicker. That makes it heavier, more prone to rust but at least new metal can be used to fill in bad spots.

I am going to skip ahead and show you before and after photos of one particularly bad spot.

We could see the missing metal from both front fenders even before the sand blasting. There is a lot of metal missing. It appears to have been cut revealing the frame and front bumper mounts underneath. More complicated is the fender bead–slightly raised accent edge on the fenders. That will be hard to reproduce from a flat piece of sheet metal.

But after everything was cleaned up Ralph was able to shape and then weld in place repair or “patch” panels. We won’t need as many as we thought for this job. By the time this repair is smoothed and painted it will be as good as news.

Now that we’ve been able to see the ’35 Dodge as naked as the day it was born in the Dodge Brothers factory in Hamtramck, Michigan, what should we do with it now? It is a canvas–what will paint? A plan is called for, or a vision or idea must not just be seen in the mind but sufficiently detailed as to be communicated to someone else. We call it the build plan, or the project build plan. Let’s talk about it.