Chemicals or Heat?

[CParker]

I'm thinking ahead of when it will be time to strip the layers of varnish from my Old Town. Since I live in the country and have a well, I'm hesitant to use any of the chemical strippers I've read about, since rinsing with lots of water appears to be standard operating procedure.

Is there any reason why I can't get the same results with carefull use of a heat gun?

 

[Dave Wermuth]

Hi cparker

there is a commercial stripper not far from Toledo that has a tank and will strip your canoe. I don't recall his name/number but he's probably in the book. Some chemical strippers are supposed ot be enviro friendly. A pressure washer helps when you do your own. . I am not aware of how heat guns work. Or if there are toxic fumes.

 

[Andy Hutyera]

Heat guns work for removing paint, but I doubt that they would be very effective on varnish. 3M makes a pretty decent non toxic stripper. It's a little expensive and works slowly, but it does work. I used it to strip varnish from a dining room floor because I didn't want the fumes in the house. It worked great. I believe most Sherwin Williams stores carry the stuff. You have to put the stuff on and cover it with plastic wrap, like Saran Wrap, and let it work for a long time.

 

[Kathryn Klos]

heat guns vs "stripper"

Heat guns work well when removing Fiberglas or paint... strippers have varying degrees of effectiveness. After several gallons of various less-toxic strippers, we used Zip Strip to really get the stuff removed from the inside of a Morris. Methaline Chloride... ahhhh... fewer brain cells for the remainder of your life, but it does a bang-up job! (Besides, when you are old, you are never sure why your short-term memory disappeared....)

 

[Splinter]

K. Klos is right on the money!

Go with the Zip Strip. The sun is a great vehicle to working the stuff thoroughly. Don't do it now. Use the suns power to motivate that finish with the Zip Strip. Paint the stuff on thick, set it in the direct sunlight on a nice warm April or May day on the South or Southeast side of your house, garage, whatever. The microclimate you create will have your varnish dancing off the wood! Then, collect up all the residule goop you can and paint it on cardboard. Let it dry completely out in the sun. Tear up the coated dry cardboard, box it up or bag it up or burn it (Yes!). It's gone. This is how "small generators" deal with quantities of finish materials when their VOC waste is too small to qualify for pick-up. They evaporate it to a solid. As long as it's not liquid, you can toss it.

 

[CParker]

Chemical or Heat

Thanks for all the info! I'm going to have to ask questions more quickly in the future, instead of stewing over them in silence. Better for the digestion!

I tried a small area with my heat gun, and it seemed to work well, although it did set off the nearby smoke alarm.

I hear what you're saying about the use of chemical strippers, but I just might have to try the heat gun first this spring, being a bit of a slow learner, plus my background in air pollution control just doesn't mesh well with burning some goopy methylene chloride in the back yard!

Maybe using the heat gun to get off the thick stuff will mean I won't have to use as much stripper to get the rest, if that proves necessary. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Thanks again!

 

[peterng]

I think it was rollin's book that suggested cutting the bristles short on a wide paint brush and using that to apply and brush in the stripper. I'd always had an awefull time removing a substantial portion of the varnish until I incorporated that part of the process.

As far as the flushing in the back yard I'm with you, no way i can let that stuff float away. I have always been around back yard hockey rinks, so I used the same concept, 2x6 sideboards and one big continuous tarp in the middle, big enough to contain the canoe, then let the water evaporate off. I take the tarp into the concrete garage floor after it is dry, brush it off with the push broom and bag the junk to goto the hazardous waste landfill. I don't imagine I get all of it, the tarp has a few pinholes and surely some evaporates off but it contains a lot of the crap.

Pete

 

[Splinter]

Hockey Oriented Canuks ingenuity!

I LOVE IT!!!! I am picturing this little canoe stripping rink (BRILLIANT!!!) and thinking, "If you're standing in all that, what kind of shoes do you wear? Do they melt? And are you also doing this in "Rubber Fishing Pants?" This HAS to be a photo we all need to see! I hope you are also wearing a really interesting hat in the photo and revealing some badly spelled tattoo's. I am spinning out of control here building my own picture of this. Someone stop me.

 

[MikeCav]

Dave W mentioned powerwasher... Be careful - most of the commercial ones can eat a hole in soft cedar pretty fast.

 

[davelanthier]

Thanks for all the info! I'm going to have to ask questions more quickly in the future, instead of stewing over them in silence. Better for the digestion!

I tried a small area with my heat gun, and it seemed to work well, although it did set off the nearby smoke alarm.

I hear what you're saying about the use of chemical strippers, but I just might have to try the heat gun first this spring, being a bit of a slow learner, plus my background in air pollution control just doesn't mesh well with burning some goopy methylene chloride in the back yard!

Maybe using the heat gun to get off the thick stuff will mean I won't have to use as much stripper to get the rest, if that proves necessary. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Thanks again!

I've used both methods and as toxic as the chemical stripper is one has to be careful too of the fumes created by a heat gun on a varnished surface.

 

[mark wismer]

I used the gelled Meth Chloride stripper & the skin of varnish used to dry up and I swept it out w/ the brush to a dust pan...tip the canoe up & brush it over & thru the inner-rail and onto a drop cloth.

I did use a respirator & PVC chem-resistant gauntlet gloves from work. The resulting dried varnish film material stuck to the plastic drop cloth. I used the apartment complex dumpster so it was landfilled. I used stainless steel sponge [Kurly Kate] to remove the remaining residue as the stainless won't flake off like steel wool & I was getting them free from work...

After letting the interior dry for a few weeks in a garage I liberally applied a mix of warm linseed oil & turp before re-garaging the canoe for the winter.

Come spring the art meuseum smell was gone and the wood had lightened back to the color after stripping. The oil initially darkened the interior enough to approximate the colors when re-varnished. I did find (2) places where the linseed had soaked thru the canvas & filler w/ out damaging them...maybe from the whole winter in storage.

Only water I used after stripping was to wet sand the cleaned off filler & the acrylic compound I used to fill the divets in the filler...

 

[DGuertin]

My Deux Sous

http://www.guertin.com/canoe/project.html

If you want a look at how the Oxalic acid and cornstarch worked out for me. Took more than one application but what the hey?

Strong stuff but if you've got rhubarb around, you're already living in it!

Good Luck!