Phase 3 - Chemical Warfare

On June 2 I purchased some eco-friendly paint stripper from West Marine. I really was looking for the Dumond Chemical Company product, Marine Safety Strip II, but I was only able to find that via mail order at Defender.com. So I settled for what West Marine had in stock. I purchased a quart of the product and was just totally horrified at the cost - $34 - FOR A QUART. I did not have high hopes for the effectiveness of this product so I was wondering how many thousands of dollars this was going to cost me in stripper! Anyway, I took it on home and figured I'd give it a try. The directions specified a dwell time of 2 - 6 hours but since I was starting this after work, I didn't have that much time. So I cut some strips of kraft paper, applied the thick paste as the directions described, and covered it with the kraft paper. I then left it until the next day.

Here are the pictures of this process:

Stripper Testing

The results were not good. When I peeled the paper off the next day, some of the paint came off on the paper, but the majority was still stuck to the boat. Some of it was wrinkled up and could be scraped off, but most appeared not to be affected. To be fair, I had not followed the directions. So, I decided to try again, using the rest of the container this time. I spread the material onto the same surfaces and left it about 2 hours. During that time frame it began to wrinkle the top layer of paint, and it appeared to soften the underlying layer, but it did not remove anything like the advertised "multiple layers at one time."

At this point I brought out the big guns. My old favorite, methylene chloride. I poured some of this material down onto the interior finish and it was wrinkling the paint within about 2-3 minutes. Within 15 minutes it had removed the top layer or two and softened the remaining layers enough so they could be scraped off. Although it required a lot of elbow grease, this was definitely the way to go.

Better living through chemistry!