Im thinking about picking up a used bench top (size) media blasting cabinet and since the largest thing I can think of that would need stripping would be the engine tin, anyone know if they'd fit in a typically sized bench top blast cabinet ?

It has been my past experience to take tin and have it done. Professionals can do the job in minutes that can take you hours to do. Avoid the headache. Blasting materials are expensive. Most powder coaters will do it at a reduced rate when they are painting.

I have more time than I do money so have blasted everything myself. I'm not sure how big the benchtop cabinets are, but I have a borrowed cabinet from a neighbor that is made from a modified 55 gallon drum. Neat idea but terrible in practice. Anyway, all of the engine tin can fit in that cabinet but I wouldn't want to try it in anything much smaller. However, the gun in my cabinet isn't very aggressive compared to my HF canister rig so it can be slow going on the larger pieces. I'm probably going to do those outside with my canister blaster even though that wastes more media.

Worked form me. Slow and tedious. You would have to at least measure to have an idea.

Use aircraft stripper on the big pieces to get the majority of the paint off then clean up with the blaster.

I have a smallish benchtop unit from Clarke and they will not fit in that.

Even it they do "fit" the problem then becomes the ability to freely rotate the part around to get it in front of the sandblast gun nozzle.

I also have a pressure pot that I can use outside in the yard. But as others said time = $ and when I'm blasting outdoors I can't recover the media. This limits me to using cheap sand and still requires quite a bit of work.

Leaning toward sending these out.

Ensure your compressor produces the CFM of air the cabinet will require. Plan on exceeding the minimum required. I had a cab at my house for a while. My comp was running on a continuous duty cycle and still couldn't keep up. You can pay for a bunch of farmed out blast work and 0 mess instead of a comp upgrade. The booth filled with dust and visibility was nil. Cleaning the reservoir and Putting spent sand in the garbage was stupid and a waste of time. YRMV.

I have a powder coat setup in my garage, but for stuff like engine tins, better off sending out.

When I painted my white 914 10 years ago I used a cardboard box from a water heater to do the big and long pieces. I placed a piece of plexiglass over a cut out it the middle of the box and placed a drop light inside along with hose and gun. Worked like a charm and I threw it in the trash when finished. It's posted here somewhere.