Ron68 wrote:
TKOPerformance wrote:
You can thank the government. The active ingredient in the strippers that worked was methylene chloride, which was banned from the strippers which are available to typical non commercial stores. You may still be able to get stuff that works through commercial channels, though what that will entail I cannot say. The stuff they sell now doesn't penetrate and lift the paint anymore. It just liquifies the top layer and creates a God awful mess, requiring repeated applications to get rid of the paint one layer at a time. I'd look at plastic media blasting. My father-in-law had two cars stripped this way and the results were excellent.
I agree - the methylene chloride stuff was what we used on aircraft. Burned like hell if you got it on your skin, but it sure would lift that paint - and aircraft paint was some good stuff. The crap we have now just barely works, and requires multiple coats to get to all the layers. With the good stuff, you'd put it on and cover it with plastic to keep the evaporation down. I once bought a five gallon can of Turco brand stripper through the stores department at work. Got a good discount too. I use a lot of it to strip my 68 before all the body work. Wish I still had that can....
The stuff my neighbor and I used on aircraft parts was the best stripper I've ever used, though even in the early '90s it was something he managed to get only through guys he knew at the local airport. It had hydrofluoric acid in it. You couldn't put it in glass; it would etc the glass. We found it wold also dissolve most plastics. For some reason, and read into this what you will, the plastic used in margarine tubs was immune to its effects. This stuff would take off ANYTHING. Undercoating, baked on wrinkle finish paint, Imron epoxy, you name it and this stuff turned it into slime in the matter of an hour or two. It required heavy gloves, because it would remove your fingerprints in the matter of a couple seconds. Years later I found out how dangerous hydrofluoric acid is. Apparently it binds to magnesium and calcium in your blood and can cause hypotension, and cardiac events up to and including death. Very dangerous stuff, BUT it worked so well we used less than 5 gallons of it on an entire airplane (excluding the exterior skin).
On one hand I wish I'd known how dangerous it was at the time, I definitely would have worn a respirator and been a bit more careful around it (of course at 12-14 years old my neighbor probably should have born that responsibility). On the other, so long as you use proper PPE I don't see the issue. There's been a real move to try and idiot proof society over the past couple decades, without the understanding that idiot proofing always underestimates the idiot. The various chlorides are what made paint stripper and carb and brake cleaner work. Obviously there were environmental concerns, but I wonder if this is going to be another case like when they removed the lead from gasoline. Lead was replaced by MTBE, which is just as dangerous, and ended up in the environment because of the leaking storage tanks that were never replaced. My guess is we are going to find out that we would have been better off to continue to use chlorides, provided people wore proper PE, and they were disposed of properly, than to use 10x as much of other hazardous products which don't work as well. I guess time will tell.
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DUH !
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