Best way to strip flaking paint on a trailer body and sheetmetal

I cover methylene chloride stripper, and my homemade lye-based house stripper, with cheap polyethylene drop cloths -- the 99-cent kind. It works very well.

-- Ed Huntress

Frankly..Ive made more on the Project in 4 months..than I grossed all of last year..or really close.

My creditors are in love with me.

This is not a steamer..but a HOT water pressure washer. Or the injector is adjusted wrongly.

True indeed.

Both of course!!

Gunner

That explains much

Gunner, teetotaler

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:28:04 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

If you're that rich now, you should -have- any more creditors. Hmm, unless that's how you met the tall panter the other night...

Oh, OK. I've heard about dem jobbers but haven't seen one yet.

Bueno, bwana. Have fun!

------------------------------------------ Do the voices in my head bother you? ------------------------------------------

After reading THIS newsgroup full of trolls, political wackos, anti-America idiots and assholes that don't know NOT to pick up a red hot horse shoe?? Get real!

Not rich, not even well off..but working on paying off at least 5 yrs worth of back medical bills, property taxes and so forth. When its gone..Ill be back to being broke, but Ill have positioned myself a bit better off as far as rolling stock and needed work tools and gotten a few creditors off my back.

Thanks!

Gunner

I would NOT use brake fluid as a paint stripper or for anything other than it's intended use in a brake system.

Chemical Paint Strippers can be neutralized (read the label) and after being neutralized they stop stripping paint and don't harm the environment too much.

But AFAIK you can't neutralize brake fluid, and it's still going to give the folks at the regional sewer plant a headache when that slug of contaminated sewage comes through. And if you hose the effluent into a storm drain you're going to cause a world of hurt to the critters that live in that creek.

-->--

On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 00:44:39 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Bruce L. Bergman quickly quoth:

This looks just like a legal disclaimer, Bruce. ;)

Other than at refinishing businesses where recycling is a reality, I've never known anyone to attempt to neutralize paint stripper, and I've seen a lot of stripping in 54 years.

I've also never known anyone rude enough to flush it. Most chem strippers will evaporate and the paint rehardens. It's always trashed. Ida thunk he'd simply wad up the newspapers and trash 'em like everyone else. YMOV

-- "Not always right, but never uncertain." --Heinlein -=-=-

In large volume operations, methylene chloride is "neutralized" with household chlorine bleach. I have no idea what the chemistry is. In small applications, like a car, the stuff is so volatile that it's probably going to evaporate before you can "neutralize" it. I've always used TSP to wash it off, on the recommendation of a manufacturer of the stuff who I called about it 30 years ago. Old info, and worth double-checking.

Brake fluid will not evaporate. If you have some that evaporates and you put it in your car, you're going to crash. d8-)

It's non-volatile, toxic, and pernicious as hell. There are few worse things you can throw in the trash or allow to get into a storm sewer. It's a bitch to get the last bit of film from the stuff off of a surface. I would never consider using it on anything I was going to paint.

Regarding methylene chloride, the big danger is that it causes the generation of carbon monoxide in your blood, if you inhale a lot of it. It can cause heart attacks. Use it outdoors and downwind.

Today's commercial strippers can consist of all kinds of weird chemicals. Here's a pretty good rundown of strippers sold to consumers. It applies to use on wood, but those are the strippers you're going to find on store shelves, anyway:

-- Ed Huntress

On Sun, 2 Sep 2007 09:11:28 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

I said "most chem strippers will evaporate". I know brake fluid doesn't.

What's worse: 5 gallons of thinners in the air or half a gallon of glycol-ether-based brake fluid in the dump? I wonder what the chemical result of it breaking down paint is, what it turns into. Less harmful, one might hope?

Wuss. ;) Quick cleanup: wipe dry, wash with soap and water, dry again, and spray and wipe with cleaner. Berryman's B-12 takes it off quickly and easily, even from porous brake shoes. I've also used naphtha and/or lacquer thinner (my most-used cleaner) after brake jobs. On non-porous metal, it's a quick deal. Soap and water take 99% of it off and the thinner takes the last 1% film. Not a prob.

B-12 contains toluene, methanol, heptanes, and acetone. Don't breathe it deeply, either.

Absolutely. That's nastyass stuff.

Informative. Danke.

-- "Not always right, but never uncertain." --Heinlein -=-=-

I'd go for the thinners in the air, if you went gallon-for-gallon. In that

Ya' got me. Chemistry makes my head hurt.

-- Ed Huntress

Bruce..sewer? Creek? This is Taft, one of the armpits of the world.

We have creeks...called "oil ditches"

Gunner

Thank you, Mr. Haney. ;-)

Just because you're still stuck in the 18th century where "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres" are considered non-fiction ;-P doesn't mean that the chemicals are suddenly rendered harmless - you still have to think about the repercussions of seemingly innocent actions.

If the brake fluid or stripper wastes go into a septic tank system and leach field, it ends up in the ground water eventually - and that ground water works it's way to a well and turns into drinking water in a year or three of percolation...

That is, if the chemicals don't have to get pumped out with the rest of the s*** when your septic tank bacteria die from the chemicals. (Or they go on strike for better working conditions, same difference.)

Then the local Honey Dipper has to come by with the vacuum truck and pump out the septic tank, and those chemicals will /still/ end up dumped into a regional sewer plant for processing.

If the storm runoff water goes into an "oil ditch" instead of a lined storm drain system, it either makes it to a river and out to the sea, or it will stop and soak into the ground along the way - and again it's in the ground water. And all the wildlife that lives along that ditch won't appreciate what you did to their drinking water.

-->--

Bruce...they call it an "oil ditch" because oil runs in it. In this case...about 10 miles long and then winds up in an "oil sump"...about the size of Delaware .... Along with every other liquid that is used in oil production, fuels, solvents and so forth. And likely Jimmy Hoffa....

I painted the body this evening, after the sun went down with Jaso paint stripper. Whatever it was...started coming off like fingerpaint in the shower. Ill check it in the morning..fire up the pressure washer and clean all the gunk off, and see what it looks like.

Gunner

On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 02:11:48 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner Asch quickly quoth:

I hope you put newspapers under it and scrape the old paint and stripper off onto that for a dump run rather than blasting it everywhere, Gunner. 6" wide mud paddles (putty knives) do well.

-- "Not always right, but never uncertain." --Heinlein -=-=-

Do so before the sun's too high in the sky. If the methylene chloride all evaporates, the paint will re-set to some extent, but it will be even less pretty than before. DAMHIKT :-(

Mark Rand RTFM

Oh..it was NASTY..but came off pretty well with a simple putty knife. Ill work on it some more after it cools again this evening.

I had "4 days off" of which I wasnt home for the first one, had to repair two friends vehicle on the second...today is busy.(and f****ng HOT) and tommorow..will have to get my CCW renewed and try to finish up what I didnt get done today.

Next 12 or so days..back to the grind on Phase 2 of the Project...sigh

Gunner

On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:33:35 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner Asch quickly quoth:

Did you have a chance to look for L6-20p/r, perchance?

Cool. My big client is back from vacation (1 of 2) so I'll start on Phase 2 of their projects on Wednesday. And another client project has tripled itself in the past weeks. I'll have enough to pay for a new Tundra one of these days.

I had a blast (double entendre intentional) today at the machine gun shoot. I tried on an M-16 for the first time and again played with an AK-47. There is no more LF tire on the donated wrecking yard van now. The binaries going boom were lots of fun, too. I like fireworks you can feel in the pits of your molars.