Greetings folks, Have not posted in some time, but I wish to ask the community here about removal of paints and coatings. Starting the restoration of a 1920's Coleman 327 Quick Lite. Some time in its life, it was sprayed(?) with a Gold coloured paint & perhaps a clear varnish of some type as well. The coating is present on the mixing chamber, burner tubes and caps, air tube, baffle plate, and the fount. The coating is relatively thin & shows honey-coloured runs on the fount. I have tried several times to use a heavy duty paint stripper gel in test locations on the fount, but the paint stripper does not effect the coating at all. I do not wish to use mechanical means to remove the coating, and wish to preserve any remaining finish underneath. Look forward to the members' thoughts on this problem. Cheers, Chris W - Winnipeg Canada
I'm no expert as everyone here knows but I find that paint stripping gel is more or less useless. Others will advise you on how to deal with this problem.
Jean is absolutely correct. Modern paint stripper is not strong enough to remove old 1920-60's lead based paint . Our nanny state system has banned all the good chemicals that could remove old paint. What we are left with is crap, weak, useless, paint stripper that is only good for removing modern water based paints. No wonder that modern paint finish is only good for about 3 years. I am reduced to mechanical paint removal on the old tanks, i.e. elbow grease and a fine wet & dry paper. Steve.
I use a proprietary product called "Motorspray" Spray on Paint Stripper. I get it from one of the auto chains here in Oz. Active ingredient: dichloromethane CH2Cl2. It is pretty effective if you follow the instructions - sometimes I've had to use a few coats on old 'varnished' paint. It's pretty volotile stuff - use outdoors with gloves and a mask. You might find something like that over your way. Cheers
After consulting with a senior member of the Canadian community, I placed the fount in a large self-sealing freezer bag, and soaked it down well with a popular oven cleaner. Sealed the bag and let it stand for 2 hours. Removed the fount from the bag and rinsed it well with clean water. Whatever that ancient nasty surface coating was, the oven cleaner removed about 98% of it. Will do one more treatment with oven cleaner and hand polish the fount with a popular automotive Aluminium mag polish (mothers). Many thanks for sharing your knowledge & experience here.
I think that'll be methylene chloride as it's known over here. Oven cleaner (as used by Chris) will probably contain sodium hydroxide. Either of these will remove paint as well as skin - wear protective gloves...
