how best to strip wood on Victorian Shutters

Hey All...

I live in a Victorian House and I am restoring the wood in the Livingroom from a garish orange (YES ORANGE!) colour back to the natural wood. I have been using a combination of heat gun, Nitromors-esk (not Nitromors as this stuff is industrial and good) and Peel Away.

The Heat gun I have had to stop using as I have discovered the other layers have lead in them, which is putting fumes into the air and I have not mask to protect me from that, the other issue is the smoke alarms are going nuts when I use the heat gun for too long (they are wired to the mains but still go off even when I turn them off).

The Nitromors-esk stuff has been great, however with the tools I have (mainly a shaving hook, paint blade & wire wool) I am struggling to remove the paint from the detailed bits contained within the shutters around the windows.

The bits stuck in the detailed wood seem to be set like conrete and are not reacting very much to the Nitromors stuff.

I have a thought that dremel type tool with some of the bits available maybe useful to get into these areas and remove the paint without damaging the wood too much.

Anyone think this is a good or ridiculous idea?

http://www.indigo.com/tools/dental-picks-probes.html

You might try these.

I am based in the UK so that link was useful for info but not for me to buy from.

I was thinking about the dremel tool but maybe you need to have a bit of practice with it on other things rather than just breaking it out on something so prominent.

I have went onto Amazon (UK) and found some tools that could be useful. they are for carving wax but providing they are sturdy enough (made from metal) they should do the trick.

Hopefully these will do the trick. I will update at the weekend once I have had a chance to properly test drive

Cheers
Col

Wear a mask and use a heat gun and putty knife. I works great.

aureliconstruction said:

Wear a mask and use a heat gun and putty knife. I works great.

Click to expand...

Cannot do that for a few reasons:

- lead paint fumes are setting off my mains powered smoke alarms that cannot be turned off.

- phoned specialist mask & filter providers & they told me because the pain could be Victorian they cannot recommend a mask without having the paint tested.

My solvent based approach seems to be working. This is how things look after last night stint:

Looks like it's a lot of work but it looks like you are getting there.