Sandblaster painted inside my cook box....what do I do now?


 

JimV

TVWBB All-Star
I have mentioned this on my Weber wheel thread but I wanted to get opinions of the whole group on this one. Long story short I asked my sand blaster to not only blast but to paint as well. He has done many professional grills and really knows what he is doing. I picked up my cook boxes today and there were tow issues......
1. He used Rustoleum High Heat roll on...( he uses a spray gun ) and as I have mentioned here before it dries brown :(
2. He painted inside my cook box!!!!!!
Please chime in.......wont this off gas and release poisonous fumes? I have to be honest I wouldnt eat a steak or anything else cooked from a freshly painted inside of a cook box........I would think it would off gas the entire time. Especially this tar like grill paint we use. See pic20211117_182743.jpg
 
JimV, there's a variety of media available to blasters as well as various grit sizes. Did you talk to your blaster/painter about the miscommunication and see what he offers to do for you to make it right? If blasting is off the table, there is always chemical strippers...or go old school with wire wheeling. No, I would not want to eat off of that grill...it might be ok but when it comes to food prep you can't cut corners, IMO.

EDIT: Even using chemical strippers on it might not be a good idea...how about pressure washing to remove the paint? It can't be completely cured yet. Try renting a high pressure gasoline-powered pressure washer maybe.
 
Ya I do have that in my favor.......I think the paint is still soft....I will talk to Mr Blaster tomorrow.......I cant catch a break....now I have one blasted box with pin holes and two brown boxes inside and out. Strike 3!!!!!
 
That is certainly disappointing. I have always chimed in with everyone else about never painting the inside, and to be honest I never will. But, the curiosity side of me does kind of wonder just how valid our concerns about fumes really are. I have no doubt when you first do a burn-off that fumes are emitted and that they would NOT be good for you or your food. But is that really true after several hours of high heat curing? I don't know, and I don't intend to be a guinea pig to find out. Just wonder, though.
 
There is soda blasting, glass bead blasting, and walnut shell blasting, to name a few, that is less agressive and kinder to our cast aluminum cookboxes. The media is more expensive than aluminum oxide or silica sand so your blaster may not want to use it, and an experienced blaster can adjust the air pressure to dial it in even further. I think if you were to ask Rustoleum about painting the inside of a barbeque they wouldn't recommend it just for liability reasons. I think if you sell this to someone there would be a fair chance they wouldn't be happy. How nany boxes are you talking about? And are you thinking removing the paint inside and out?
 
That is certainly disappointing. I have always chimed in with everyone else about never painting the inside, and to be honest I never will. But, the curiosity side of me does kind of wonder just how valid our concerns about fumes really are. I have no doubt when you first do a burn-off that fumes are emitted and that they would NOT be good for you or your food. But is that really true after several hours of high heat curing? I don't know, and I don't intend to be a guinea pig to find out. Just wonder, though.
Jon, look at my post in JimV's other thread on this. Just an observation on my part that echoes this
 
That is certainly disappointing. I have always chimed in with everyone else about never painting the inside, and to be honest I never will. But, the curiosity side of me does kind of wonder just how valid our concerns about fumes really are. I have no doubt when you first do a burn-off that fumes are emitted and that they would NOT be good for you or your food. But is that really true after several hours of high heat curing? I don't know, and I don't intend to be a guinea pig to find out. Just wonder, though.
You could try heating it up to soften the paint while wire brushing the inside by hand, or hit the inside with a wire brush first to see if the paint comes off easily...thinking here that you only want to remove the paint on the inside and not the outside.
 
I will do a scratch test.....maybe it will come off easy who knows......if it comes off easy I will wire wheel it....otherwise my blaster is gunna have to make this right and blast it clean. On the previous box that he didnt paint it seemed to have a grey coating of some kind......I wonder if that coating is safe????
I have two boxes that were painted inside and out.....dang it.....why did I drop them both off!!!
 
Jim, the gray coating on the other box was probably just oxidized aluminum and residual matter from sandblasting. You would have to clean that off to get good adhesion of your paint anyway I would think.
 
I will do a scratch test.....maybe it will come off easy who knows......if it comes off easy I will wire wheel it....otherwise my blaster is gunna have to make this right and blast it clean. On the previous box that he didnt paint it seemed to have a grey coating of some kind......I wonder if that coating is safe????
I have two boxes that were painted inside and out.....dang it.....why did I drop them both off!!!
The gray coating is the dust left after blasting. Blasting breaks down the grit as well as removing a fine layer of the material that is being blasted and creates a lot of dust, so much so that within a very short period of time you can't see what you are blasting. That dust gets on everything. It will kill you if you don't have a respirator or a sandblasting booth.
 
Dumb kids, we sandblasted a '41 Ford panel truck in the backyard of a rental house 45 years ago. I rented a commercial blast rig and air compressor, 1400lbs of playground sand, a lot of help and a lot of beer that day. My poor neighbor, his name was Clarence, really a sweet old guy, had a dichondra front lawn that he spent hours caring for, he had to paint his house the next year. Dumb a$$ kids, I'm tellin' ya...I'll see if I can find pictures...
 
Dumb kids, we sandblasted a '41 Ford panel truck in the backyard of a rental house 45 years ago. I rented a commercial blast rig and air compressor, 1400lbs of playground sand, a lot of help and a lot of beer that day. My poor neighbor, his name was Clarence, really a sweet old guy, had a dichondra front lawn that he spent hours caring for, he had to paint his house the next year. Dumb a$$ kids, I'm tellin' ya...I'll see if I can find pictures...
You sandblasted his house?
 
Hilarious :) Ya I would like to apologize to Mr Emerson my old neighbor when I was growing up......nice man but his kids were all grown up and gone. I was the baby of 5 and we played basketball until it got dark then turned on the flood lights and kept playin until Mom made us come inside. ( the only video game was pong ) .........Well if that wasnt bad enough....me my brother and my best friend all had dirt bikes.....when we got home from school we couldnt wait to start them up and rev the engines.......not redneck style....more like really excited kids style........that poor man deserves a medal of some kind. I try to remember those stories as kids today ride their bikes through my lawns and break limbs off of my tree's........I assume Mr Emerson from heaven just getting me back :)
 
You sandblasted his house?
No, he had a very nice old house and he was retired and was meticulous about his house and his landscaping. I swear, Clarence would get on his hands and knees and pluck the weeds and wild grasses out of his dichondra with a tweezers, and it was only a very small area, maybe 5' x 8' at most. His house had bright white trim and the dust we generated that day made it look dingy.

The old man that built the house we were renting lived across the street, although he no longer owned it, man by the name of Foster. It was an old house in the old part of Brea, CA, built in the '50s I think. The house was so simply constructed you could see daylight through the cracks in the walls.
 
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That reminds of a housing development about twenty miles from me of very poorly constructed homes built for returning WWII veterans. They are still there 70 years later.
 

 

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