Back-in-Black
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Looking good. You really do have a fun project.
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.Soooooooo much paint! When I was in the Army, many moons ago, when guys didn't have anything to do, someone would hand them a paint brush and a bucket of paint and say "go paint that Jeep". I suspect that's pretty much what happened here. "Go paint that generator".
I knew there was a bunch of paint on this thing, I experienced the same problem with my little sandblaster. I figured an industrial compressor and blaster would speed it up considerably. Not so much. The blaster still has to eat thru each layer of paint, and it does so over a much bigger area but it still takes time to eat thru all that paint. Too much time. At the rate it was going, it would have taken me about a year of steady work to blast every part. So I started trying other things. Paint stripper: Don't know if anyone else here has tried paint stripper lately - they took some chemical out of it (probably due to some EPA rule or something) but basically modern paint stripper is absolutely worthless. I tried using it on those rocking chairs mentioned earlier in this thread. I ended up sanding the old paint off the chairs. The paint stripper was just as useless on this paint. Doesn't even soften it up any.
Next I tried a knotted wire cup on a 3" side grinder. That was a lot faster than the sandblaster but still pretty slow. Too slow. Cut the time down to 6 months of steady work...
Then I remembered I had some 4-1/2", 36 grit sanding discs in my "grinder box". So I put one of those on and gave it a try. Much better. Think we got it down to 3 months of work. Problem is, there's a lot of places you you can't get a round, spinning piece of sandpaper on these things, inside corners, handles, latches, weld seams, etc.
So what I did was decided to concentrate on the 2 pieces that are holding me up right now. The skid assembly and the front of the case where the control cubicle mounts. I got every bit of paint off of each part possible using the grinder and then used the sand blaster to go back and hit the places I couldn't get.
Saturday: ~6:30 AM till 10:30 PM
Sunday: 7:30 AM till midnight.
Sunday, I ate a donut on the way out the back door and didn't even so much as sit down till I ate diner at midnight.
I got both of those parts done for the most part but still have some areas on the skids that I need to get back to when I have the time. I left some flat places to be done on the skids - places that I can get with the sanding disc but in the interests of getting as much done with the big sandblaster as I could while I had it for the weekend, I concentrated on the tough to get areas. I figure I'll keep doing the same thing with my small sandblaster and maybe ever try to hit weld seams and such with a wire cup before resorting to blasting (the disc doesn't work so great on uneven surfaces for obvious reasons).
The rust under the batteries and under the fuel tank was pretty bad.
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You're getting there and it's certainly a labor of love! Your gonna love it when finished. After its all fixed up and running like a top, you're probably going to occasionally feel like you need to go out and keep it company & wax it & pet it!
.Second verse, same as the first.
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