[John68]

AND IT WORKS!!!

hee hee, I am giddy. ::

This is from a Farmall Cub forum...


If you are careful you can easily strip parts with caustic. Go to the grocery store and get some Sodium Hydroxide (Red Devil Brand Lye) and mix with water About a table spoon lye per cup water. Wear some good chemical gloves and a face sheild and keep a jug of vinegar around to neutralize spills. If you want to remove paint it will do the trick as well and cheaper than anything else and doesn't have the vapor of the Easy Off. Remember to add the caustic to the water so there is no spatter. For additionally hard to get off paint you can easily mix some corn starch with the water to make it thick then brush it on and cover with some plastic wrap to keep it moist. It will cut paint as well as your skin so be careful and don't let the kids get near it. Spray it off in the drive when finished, dry, prime, paint.


I love how these people paint stuff, they hose it down with soap and water to get the big chunks of grass and stuff off, then scrape off some grease with a putty knife, and then shoot paint! There are some neat old farmer tricks to be found though!

There is another recipe for electrolytic stripping, but I have yet to try it. Apparently you use a mild acid solution and a battery charger and it supposedly eats rust and dirt. After I try it, I will let you know.

 

[oboebrian_AZ]

Does it work better than aircraft stripper? Did it work really fast with not too many re-applications?

 

[bosscars]

yeah, I am just curious about how effective it is on catalyzed (ie hardened) paints. I have been using the plastic wrap method for quite some time now, but prefer the Klean Strip Aircraft stripper (available at Walmart for 19.95 a gallon) over all the strippers out there. Of course, multiple layers of paint require multiple applications of stripper....

randy

 

[onepyramid]

Been doing this for years, but they are right, BE CAREFUL, especially around the eyes. I have a 55 gallon metal drum that I use as a soaking tank. 1 lb. of Red Devil per 5 gallons of water. Let parts soak for 2-3 days, and VIOLA, no paint. Small parts go in a basket, or on the end of a wire, so I can retrieve them easily.

DO NOT put any aluminum parts in this solution. They disappear, quickly!

 

[toddwallace]

I didn't know that walmart carried that. I always go to the PPG house and pay a pretty penny.

 

[toddwallace]

do you use plastic wrap with the chemical stripper? Seems like that would eat right through it.....

 

[oboebrian_AZ]

Actually the plastic wrap isn't affected too much from what i hear, and it doesn't allow the stripper to evaporate as fast as without the wrap over it.

 

[bosscars]

surprisingly, the plastic wrap is TOTALLY unaffected by the stripper (don't ask me why, Im not a chemical engineer). It keeps the stripper working TOWARDS the metal, rather than away from it by evaporating....

randy

 

[gwstang]

I worked with caustic soda in a water plant and that stuff will burn like nothing you've ever seen. You get it on you and it feels kinda cool, then it starts burning, then you spray water on it and it really starts burning! :: Have the vinegar handy to pour over any you get on your skin. If you get this stuff in your eyes, they are toast! It leaves permanent scars (like a burn leaves in skin) so be careful ! It's too late when you go...Oh, Sheeet! The weird thing is you go to take a shower hours later when finished and the little tiny spots that got on you go to burning when the water hits.... (I think the secret here is that the water activates it, but the vinegar neutralizes it )

 

[dailydriver]

I second gwstang's safety warnings. For God's sake, wear a good pair of chemical goggles when you fool with this stuff. If you get it in your eye, you will be a corneal transplant candidate! Anyplace on your skin, and you may get severe burns.

NEVER pour water onto the powder..!! It can have a violent reaction, almost an explosion, and the splatter from it will burn any body parts it touches. It is activated by water. If you pour the powder into a sufficient quantity of water, the reaction will not explode, just will warm the water up a bit. We used to mix 50 lb sacks of this product into a 55 gallon drum of water to adjust the pH of our drilling fluid on drilling rigs. People were always getting burned with it, and all they did was dump a sack into a full barrel of water and stir it up.

NaOH is the extreme opposite of an acid on the pH scale. This scale runs from 1 (strong acid) to 14 (strong base). NaOH is pH 14..! It strips paint due to the extremely high pH. That is why it doesn't affect the plastic used to cover it. And, as noted, it will absolutely dissolve aluminum, so proceed with caution. This is really nasty stuff to be handling.