I'm looking at a Royal just now which is reasonably sound mechanically but the body is beaten up:



The price is about 10% more than i was wanting to pay given the condition, but I'm coming round to the idea of making a bit of a project out it and get to know the grinder intimately.

I phoned a couple of places about powder coating it and they said i'd need to get the body sanded and prepared before they will do the work, so now my main concern is how hard it would be to get the paint off it and looking smooth again. Would paint stripper do or is a sander required? I'm pretty wet behind the ears with this stuff so any advice would be great.

Powdercoaters in the UK don't do there own blasting? You'll have to strip it to a bare shell for powdercoating so why can't they just bake off the paint?

The baked on paint Mazzer uses doesn't respond well to liquid strippers unless you use something really aggressive. Best bet is to take it outside & sand it down with an orbital sander.

Some places do their own blasting but when I said it was for a coffee grinder they got a bit tenative and said they'd need it prepped and ready to go. Got a couple more places to phone tomorrow so hopefully one of them will do it, would save me a lot of hassle.

You do realize that you'll have to remove the stator assy., bearings, ect. if you have it powdercoated?? Much easier to just strip the paint, mask & repaint.

I'd heard the Royal wasn't too hard to disassemble which was another thing going in favour of powder coating.

Is stripping it with an orbital sander be hard or just time consuming? I don't mind the former but would be considered about not having sufficient skill if it's the latter. And would it then just be a case of a few coats of primer and some metal paint?

Disassemble it completely and walk into the powder coating shop with body and cash in hand. See what they say. Also check into some custom car and motorcycle shops. Small powder coating rigs may be found that way.

I would abrasive or soda blast it off. It might even look good without powder coating (ie, bare metal). Sanding and then getting it scratch free sounds like a hassle.

Having read a few threads about disassembling Mazzers a strip, mask and paint might be about the limits of my technical knowledge for the moment. I could manage this, but something like this would be impossible. While someone said the Royal was the easiest to get everything out the case I still don't want the risk of ending up with a 20kg paperweight.

That's why I asked if you knew what was required to prep it for powdercoating. All internal parts, wiring, bearings, ect would have to come out then it would have to be reassembled wearing it's shiny new paint. Painting will save quite a bit of work.

. . . but I'm coming round to the idea of making a bit of a project out it and get to know the grinder intimately.

This might help: http://www.fotchbook.com/faq/mazzer/index.html

When you see "patience" on sale, buy the entire store in addition to a few tools.