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@clubman
I was just using 'shot blasting' as a generic term for any type of blasting. Naturally, the medium used will affect the result.
As to 'industry specs' we are not talking about modern engineering here, but restoration of a few bike parts. If you can find anyone to take an interest in a small job like this you should expect him to use whatever medium he's got handy: in the past I've had a frame back from blasting with a hole blasted through the bottom bracket shell ! God knows how they managed to do that, but be warned.
Incidendally, even when done with reasonable care (and that's the highest standard you can expect) each time a steel frame is blasted it loses about half an ounce of material. So this is not something that should be done regularly.
My experience is that chrome is competely unaffected by bead (not even enough to give a key for paint) but with heavier media it will sometimes start to peel in places, but remain untouched in others - a pretty hopeless outcome. If the blasting is heavy enough to remove it completely it will be ok for painting, but the Devil's own job to polish for re-chroming.