Prepping a surface entails entraining a coating particle into a fluid stream, directing the fluid stream containing the coating particle at the surface to be prepped to thereby prep the surface using the coating particle. The prepped surface can then be coated using the same or substantially similar coating particle. This technique can be used with a continuous airjet, a forced pulsed airjet, a continuous waterjet or a forced pulsed waterjet as the carrier stream. This invention solves the problem of foreign blasting particles becoming embedded in the atomic matrix of the surface to be prepped, which can result in unpredictable behavior of the surface properties and even catastrophic failure.