removing paint

[jonmac]

Hey everybody, I bought an old boat and need to remove the old paint.
What is the best way to do this, it has a couple of leaks in it that I need to repair.
I thought about a flapper disk that goes on a grinder but didn't know if that would remove to much metal and make it weaker.

any ideas would be appreciated.

Jon

 

[Brine]

Lots of folks have had good success with Aircraft Stripper. If you do a search on here for it, you should get lots of info.

Angle grinders/drills with a wire wheel attachement are also polular.

If you don't see what you're looking for, post back and I'll try to dig up some links for you.

Good luck,
Brine

 

[BassBlaster]

I started wire wheeling mine. Spent 2 hours just cleaning up the gunwales. I found out a buddy had a sandblaster and he let me use it. Stripped the whole boat bare in 15 minutes. If you can somehow gain access to a sandblaster, thats definately the way to go. Otherwise I would look into the aircraft stripper. Seems to do a really good job based on what I have seen here.

 

[Sader762]

You know, after spending almost 20 hours on prepping mine now, if I was to do it again I'd go rent a big compressor and sand blast mine (I have a small compressor and a sand blast kit). Others will say "you can't do that to aluminum" but as long as you use more mild mediums you'll be fine. I know the wire wheel and grinder combo does more to hurt the aluminum that sand blasting would.

 

[BassBlaster]

The sandblasting didnt hurt my boat at all. I used the finest sand they had and it just ate the paint right off. I would guess if you spent too much time in one area that it would eat up some aluminum but it peels the paint so fast you wont be in any one area for very long. Mine was blasted bare in 15 minutes so its definately fast. That was all the sides and the bottom. I have never checked but I would guess you could probably rent a blaster and compresser from HD or Lowes.