Hey guys... One thing that I dont like when it comes to paint... is the removal. You can sand it off... grind it off... chemically melt it off. All these take a good bit of money, and if you overdo it your pretty well stuck. The solution that I've used, is to use a razor blade. Yup you read that right, a razor blade... a single blade like whats on a paint scraper flat cut rectangular doohickey that'll cut ya to the bone if ya let it. The steps... 1. Find a razor blade that fits the hand... not to long of a handle (retractable style) or you lose control. To short and you cant get the 45 degree angle ya need to peel the paint off. 2. Make sure the blade is relatively sharp, to sharp and you will have trouble the first time around... to dull and it wont work. 3. The steps on how ya do it... Hold the blade and handle at a 45 degree angle in front of you with the blade contacting the paint. Make a nick in the paint with the edge of the blade, slowly enlarging it until you have a circle. Once you have the blade inside a nick thats below the level of the surrounding paint, pick a direction, and attempt to split the layers of the paint. With a little practice you can take a multi layer paint job down to the original color. Avoid at all costs hitting bondo head on... or cutting the corners off of a fiberglass car. The sharper the blade the easeir it is to cut into stuff you want to save. 4. Once you have the paint down to the level you wish (original primer, raw metal... gel coat etc) if you didnt nick anything to badly the only need to sand for a couple minutes to get the finish that would have taken forever with a sanding block. Other things you might want to look into... Wear your safety goggles... not just saftey glass's... the speeding chips fly clear past if you try an go to fast... the slower you move the razor, the less pass's you will need to make. The thicker the paint, the easier it is to remove with the razor blade technique. The thinner the more you might want to consider using sandpaper... But, if you have a car that's been driven all its life where every couple years somebody throws another 500 dollar quick shot done in a day paint job on... this should work for you. Easiest places to start are: Nicks that are already there... Bubbled up spots in the paint... and the edges of panels. Frugality factor: 1.95 for the retractable razor setup and a couple extra blades... vs 20 dollars worth of sandpaper, rubber block vs 20 bucks worth of stripper that might eat the bondo clear out of the car you didnt know was wacked up front. Good luck... if you've got an old painted something ya wanna try it the technique out on, might convert ya over to the cheap side (Not the dark side... we're not talking duct tape here )
I use an old blade out of a wood working Jack Plane that I inherited from my grandfather...He used it to scrape gaskets. I use it for that too. The trick is to make it "chatter" on the surface so it works sort of like a jack hammer. Old lead base enamel is easy, it pops of and falls straight to the floor, it's so heavy. I'll have to try the razor blade next time... Thanks for the good tech post!
Another razor blade tip is use a new sharpe one on paint runs. Every once and a while when really putting on a wet heavy last coat of clear you might put on a few runs. After it drys and before you color sand and polish,put a piece of masking tape across the two corners(so they doN`T dig in)and with the blade flat cut the tops of the runs off. Saves a lot of sanding them out. JR...
If you want to scrape a flat area, use the 3" razor-scrapers that are meant for wallpaper removal. You can get 'em at Home Depot or any hardware store. And heat also helps. Not much heat: a propane canister can blister paint pretty quickly. Also available at Home Depot or any hardware store.
my ute had so many layers of paint and bad filler work that, to take it back to bare metal, i used a woodworking chisel! the chamfered head means you can use quite a lot of force (relatively) without burying it into the metal by accident. it worked awesome, and did very little damage (maybe two or three spots where i fucked up going too fast, but they were easily fixed with a flap disk)... i agree with your method whole heartedly. particularly the point about - the thicker, the easier...
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