We bought a used spray booth. It has never had a peelable coating on it. Can I just go over it with an orbital sander to get some of the over spray off them spray it with a peelable coating? I’m thinking SW peelable coating. Or does someone have a better idea? Thanks in advance

Dan, DO NOT!! sand it. Strip it off with stripper. Get the metal nice and clean.
May take several applications. Clean metal with Acetone.
When nice and clean apply the peelable coating. Make sure you put on the correct amount as most take several coats to get the mills required.
I have not found one that is better than another. In fact I feel the old solvent base coating peeled better than the water based stuff out now.
You never really peel it off, In my forty years of doing this work I have only peeled a booth once. The main thing is don't let people test your spray gun fan pattern on the booth walls!! Such a pet peeve!!

Bob, I hear ya on the pet peeve. I’ve tried cleaning it with solvent and it rubs off the white paint as well. It’s originally white not bare metal. Not sure if I want to strip the whole booth the bare metal. Or I maybe cleaning it too good.

Ours was wretchedly abused when we bought it some 15 years ago, and being a small one (8ft cube) it really got coated.

Finally after 12 years of dealing with dust we got smart and fixed it.

It took 2 industrious, ambitious workers a full day to scrape it off.

We tried paint stripper and it helped in some spots but we didn't have much of a choice but to grind some of it off with a handheld disc sander.

We decided to coat the booth first with glossy Macropoxy from Sherwin Williams, which worked WONDERFULLY. Macropoxy is some incredible stuff.

After the Macropoxy cured over the weekend we piled on some solvent based strip coating from Sherwin Williams.

We peeled it off about a year and a half later without much difficulty and recoated with solvent based stuff from ML Campbell, which cured with much more of a slick gloss to it, which seems to work better.

I can't say the MLC brand will peel as easy as the SW did but it definitely resists overspray better.

Just test your peelable coating in a small area of non-clean booth and see what happens.

I've used boothcoat before over non-clean booths.
Worked fine.

When i peel it, it will occasionally also peel whatever was stuck in the first place.

It also doesn't come off as nicely in sheets as it does on a perfectly clean booth.

Boothcoat is pretty thick compared to most other stuff i've used, which probably helps a lot here.

I wouldn't use any of the thinner peeling stuff over a non-clean booth.

The other thing is that, depending on your booth/coating/etc, you can usually pressure-wash existing stuff off.

Most coatings will not withstand 3000+ psi pressure washing :)

Whether this is an option depends on a lot, but it sure is nice when you can do it ;)