This one definitely works out to a good deal - by the time I'm done, I'll have spent less than I would have on grizzly's new lathe, and have one with the same or larger capacity and 3 times the mass, along with about 50% longer tailstock quill travel.
My goal with the paint is to get it basically as shiny and smooth as a well polished car; depending on the paint I go with, I'll likely do a clear coat if its available. I considered powder coating, but I've never seen it reach that level of shine before, not sure its possible, though the durability would be nice. I figure once its cleaned to bare metal, I'll do a very thin coat of bondo and sand again to smooth out the pebbly texture of cast iron as much as possible. Same reason I'm wanting to get it blasted instead of scrape - make sure there aren't lines under the new paint from the old layers, even if they aren't loose anymore.
Scott, do you know what sort of time frame that practice happened during? While this is an old design, its a relatively "new" build, from 1963. The couple spots with bare metal visible look to just be bare metal, but could be any other coating already wore off in those areas like the paint did.