I'm practicing on an old case, cutting a window and I decided to experiment with paint as well. I started off with sanding, but it takes forever, and uses a ton of paper. I got down to bare metal and I like the look. how can I best do this with the remaining pieces? i've read that chemicals are the best, but I also have access to heatgun. sandblasting is out of my budget. I've read that oven cleaner or pinesol, or hot vinegar work well for this, as well as commercial stripper. what do u use/recommend?
Paint stripper! Seriously though, a bit of specialised stuff will do wonders for you, then it'll just take a bit of wet'n'dry to sort it out tbh.
When I recently did this to some door frames, I used a heat gun and a scraper Here however, I would recommend some form of paint stripper. If you have any old-skool oven cleaner lying around, try that as well. Look into one of those sanding power tools as well (the ones with a triangular head), they do make a strenuous job easy.
Thanks for all the answers, folks... Seems like paint stripper is the preferred method! Any particular kind I should look for? I'm not certain what type of paint is on this case (or even the material of the case), I'm suspecting its acrylic. I've got some ancient oven cleaner which I can try out, the warning labels said not to use it on something (i forget what, but at the time, it seems that that something (paint) was what I was trying to strip!) I've got a beatup old black and decker finishing sander (orbital) which works ok (way better than my hand or sanding block.) Here's some pics of the progress and the tool. Notice how I've torn through 4 sanding surfaces (first one was Wet/dry 320, then I bought a sheet of 180 and sliced that up to fit the sander.) Edit- I just learned a sanding tip I want to try out. Attaching ducttape to the back of the sandpaper helps prevent it from wearing out like seen in the last pic. (Course, I want to strip it first with something chemical easily.) Initially: several hours later: even later (i'm liking the look): Sander and paper:
dagnabit! I just got home and realized the rest of the case is plastic! I was gonna try the oven cleaner on the other body panels, but no longer. I'm gonna have to paint the case, and probably use some sort of vinyl dye on the plastic if I decide to go forward with it. Beige plastic doesn't look good with smooth steel/aluminum. Don't want to waste the hard work of cutting and sanding that one panel, though. On the other hand, I don't really have that many other cases suitable for the mods I'm thinking of. (too small, too plastic, covers all one piece. I feel like GoldiModder...) Of course, it's all practice, but I was hoping I'd have a cool case out of it, rather than a TwoFace.... hmm, that's an idea. I'm trying out the oven cleaner on another old panel I have. The cleaner is so ancient it didn't come out of the spray nozzle until I drilled it out with my smallest bit. Yeah, a needle would have worked better, but I didn't have one handy, and I don't care about spray pattern. The warning I saw above was not to use on painted surfaces (which makes sense, since I'm using it to remove the paint!) So will I have to scrap it off with a blade of sorts, or can I just wipe it off? I'm gonna wait an hour and see what it looks like. EDIT- So the oven cleaner didn't work for me. I left it on for a little over an hour, and tried to scrub it off. I first used a tshirt, and when that didn't work, the back of a hacksaw blade. Didn't see any helpful effect. Any further ideas?
I've used some filler primer on the textured plastic on the case I'm painting at the moment, that might be worth a look?
Thanks for the idea sesterfield. I'd like to know how that works for you, and see some pics of the results and your thought on it. Did you have to sand off the top surface before adding the filler primer? Mostly, I'm just POed cause I didn't notice the other panels were plastic, and now I can't go the full baremetal route. It's an old Gateway case with a old p3 in it (I was gonna throw in an old Dual P2 500mhz board, just for my linux kicks), so I'm not worried, just hate the sudden plan derailment, and my own lack of foresight.
well all I did was scuff the plastic up with some pretty rough paper, then do all the fine sanding on the filler/primer itself. I'll get pics when I've finished (might be a week or two, I'm pretty lazy ) funny you should say it's an old p3 machine, the case I'm doing now is an old Intergraph workstation which had dual p3 xeons!
I always used nitromors when i need to strip paint etc, it always seems to work for me never had any problems yet, it even managed to strip the rubberised coating that was on my bike! which couldnt even be stripped with a sandblaster.
I use MEK to strip with. Eats anything not metal, basically. Hurts like fire, burns through the skin and water won't wash it off-but soap will neutralize it. But damn, it's good.
An old classic: brake fluid. It eats anything plastic. I also had a can of gasoline that was to old to use. I could soak stuff in that overnight.
thanks for the tips, there are a lot of interesting chemicals out there. I'll have to check into some of those things. once the chemicals are applied, does the paint just wipe off, or is more scraping or forceful scrubbing required? (like with steel wool or wire brush?) one of goals was top be cheap, and use what I already had, but it seems that's not gonna cut it.
For my old pedal cars and things metal I have found this spray stuff from an automotive paint distributor that will eat through aircraft epoxy paints. This stuff bubbles almost immediately and if left for 15 minutes the paint slides off onto the ground. Ground because this stuff will REALLY hurt you if used indoors. Emergency room hurt you stuff. Let me hike to the tack room and see if I can find a can. Otherwise Google for aircraft paint stripper. You have been warned, it works but OUTSIDE ONLY!!!! Back with a pic if I find a can. Mar Hyde from the interweb.
Yeah that stuff seems like it would do the trick and then some. According to some of the other links I saw about talstrip it even removes powercoating! And about $8 a can on amazon (cheap stripper jokes anyone?) I'll have to see if I can find some locally for later use. (as I mentioned above, the rest of the previous case is plastic, so it's not gonna be stripped. )
Sounds like the paint stripper I used earlier this year. NASTY stuff; effective, but nasty. Probably contains dichloromethane.
