NINE LAYERS of old paint on my project!! and I'm trying to strip it...

I'm no body man but a friend is. He repainted my '73 vette some years ago and used a DA to strip off 5-6 layers of paint. He was never sure how many, mostly the same colour. Anyway it turned out great! N.N.

 

I vote for the razor blade idea as well HOWEVER...It's in your favor that it has so much paint on it, use a heat gun on it as you go and the paint will soften and peel much easier !

 

Another great tip. I may head over to work first thing tomorrow morning and borrow one of the shop heat guns and try it out...

 

When using stripper the best way to go is the following.

If you can s****e the top layers with a razor blade that will speed up the process. Don't waste a lot of time s****ing. There are s****ers that hold a single edge razor blade (not the folding ones) that work great for this.

If you hit bondo just leave it.

Once the heavy stuff is s****ed then scuff the surface with 36 grit (some of the old stuff lying around is fine. Then put a good coating of stripper on the surface of the panel. Old guys will tell you only spread the stripper in one direction (bs) but you want it thick, if it is too thin then it will not stay wet and once dry stops working (similar to... Well...). Try and stay away from tight areas like corners etc as the stripper can be a difficult to remove and you do not want any left behind. Best to tape these areas off.

Once the stripper is on the car ***emble the stripper pole...Wait... drifting off topic..

Cover the paint stripper with plastic as stated above, this will help it to stay wet longer and will also allow the fumes/chemicals etc stay on the panel. Check every so often and look to see how it is coming along. It will start to lift along the areas that have been scored with the 36 and edges first.

When you think it is ready then s****e it with the razor blades again and repeate if necessary. Do not try and remove bondo with the stripper as the stripper just gets ****ed up in the bondo and does nothing. Use a clean and strip disk, grinding disk etc.

Once I am done with the stripping and it has dried, I like to go over the bare metal with 80grit and a Da then those strip disks in tight areas. If there is any rust I grid it or sand blast it. If metal will stay open for a while I like to use metal prep. I usually will not leave metal bare for very long and prefer to work small areas and then get those areas into an epoxy primer immediately rather than weight for the rust to come back.

 

I'ved used the razor blade method with great success. A body shop owner turned me on to this method when he used this idea to strip his 40 Ford. Works great and is fairly clean with no fumes.