Media blasters: quote the media, not just the hours. Free, no signup.
Defaults are editable starting points, not market prices. Your supplier's actual bag cost is the real number.
Blasting quotes die on the hourly number. Media swings from $0.12 to $0.85 a pound and eats pounds per square foot, so the material line moves the quote. Start with your bar (75), margin (20 percent), minimum fee ($250), daily goal ($600). Pick a job preset: Truck frame, Car chassis, Steel trailer, Fence run, each filling sqft, blast minutes, and media pounds as starting points, with a 1.4x multiplier for heavy rust. Pick a media preset: Coal slag, Garnet, Glass bead, Walnut shell, each filling dollars per pound and waste percent. The leaks card counts containment, masking, cleanup, drive minutes, miles, helper hours, and an indoor toggle with vent and respirator cost. Results show media pounds and cost, blast versus setup hours, your time at your bar, vehicle, true cost, the recommended quote (cost plus margin, rounded up to $25, never below the minimum), dollars per sqft and per hour, and a leak note when media tops 35 percent of the quote. Verdicts are PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE, BUT LEAKING, WORKING TOO CHEAP, or LOSING MONEY. The gut check grades your instinct quote; the day planner turns your goal into jobs with an over-10-hour warning. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Truck frame with coal slag at a $75 bar and 20 percent margin: 120 sqft, 2.5 blast minutes per sqft, heavy rust at 1.4x, 2.0 pounds per sqft, $0.12 per pound, 15 percent waste, 45 containment plus 30 mask plus 30 cleanup plus 40 drive minutes, 30 miles at $0.67. Media needed is 120 x 2.0 x 1.4 x 1.15 = 386.4 pounds, costing $46.37. Blast time is 120 x 2.5 x 1.4 / 60 = 7.0 hours; setup is 2.42 hours; your time is 9.42 hours at $75 = $706.25; vehicle is $20.10. True cost is $772.72. Recommended quote is max(250, ceil(772.72 x 1.20 / 25) x 25) = $950, or $7.92 per sqft. Effective rate is $950 / 9.42 = $100.88 per hour, which clears the bar, so the verdict is PRICED RIGHT. A $500 gut quote would pay $53.10 per hour, sit $272.72 under true cost, and leave $450 on the table. The day planner turns $177.28 of profit per job into 4 jobs and 37.7 hours for a $600 goal, which fires the over-10-hour warning.
Why does media get its own card instead of being folded into materials?
Media is the volatile line. Coal slag at $0.12 a pound and walnut at $0.85 a pound are different jobs at the same square footage, so one flat rate hides a margin swing that labor alone never explains.
What is the media-share leak note?
When media cost alone tops 35 percent of the quote, the note warns that one bad pounds-per-sqft estimate kills the margin. A fence run on walnut shell hits 37 percent, so the estimate is the quote.
How does the surface condition multiplier work?
Heavy rust at 1.4x multiplies both the media pounds needed and the blast minutes, because rough steel eats more media and takes longer than clean paint.
What does the indoor toggle change?
Enclosed work adds your vent setup minutes to setup time and the respirator and filter cost to hard costs, since ventilation is real time and real money.
What does WORKING TOO CHEAP mean here?
The quote covers true cost but your effective rate falls below 80 percent of your bar. The minimum fee is usually the drag: small jobs priced at the floor cannot clear a real hourly bar.