No 7 paint removal

If it's old paint...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>You should be able to just chip it off of the japaning. Use a light touch with a scraper or screwdriver blade. Mineral spirts work also and shouldn't hurt/ melt the japaning.

Good luck!

Harbor Freight

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>I just had a great experience removing silver and gold paint from a #40 using a HF chisel. Get one with the bright orange plastic handle.

Japanning

woodburnbob

>Japanning, the industrial black stuff, is pretty interesting in itself. All the formulas were secret, but it generally consists of Gilsonite (see defn at the end), linseed oil, a variety of resins (e.g. amber), a variety of solvents meant to evaporate and cook off, and various secret ingredients...perhaps human biolgicals. It was sprayed on and baked in ovens. The purpose was a coating that resisted all solvents and corrosion and would never come off.

It's amusing that it flakes off like crazy once water gets beneath it and rust separates it from metal. This bugs the japan preservers and tool collectors and all those who want things unblemished and orderly.

The flip side is if you want to get it off, e.g., to repaint fresh metal, you'd better find a bead blasting or sand blasting booth. You can't get "all" of it off with anything. I can't anyway. Easy enough to remove the stuff on top rust, though.

If you put a common solvent on it and rub with a white cloth, you can bet black stuff, but I think it is a top layer of "oxidized" japan...like when you used to use rubbing compound on that old oxidized Chevy in the years before clear coat.

I got one of those orange-red painted beauties and learned it was meant to deter theft and misidentification. I painted it with that orange-colored citrus-smelling paint remover and moved the paint remover around with an acid (solder) brush until all the Halloween paint lifted easily...something like 15-30 minutes as I recall. I then washed it down with mineral spirits. No japanning disaster. Perhaps a little japan softening but it rehardened.

To me the interesting thing was that afterwards the original japanning that was still intact/attached was quite bright and shiny, like I say, similar to rubbing out a Chevy but much less real work.

But don't do anything I've done on my word. You'll just prove me to be mistaken and wrong.

From the OED

Gilsonite (__________). Also gilsonite.

[f. the name of S. H. Gilson (see quot. 1888): see -ite1.]

The proprietary name of an exceptionally pure variety of asphalt, found in Utah and Colorado as a brittle, brilliant black solid with a high softening temperature; it resembles glance pitch and grahamite.

Tar

jim reed @ tallahassee

>So japan finish is just tar. Paint technology was pretty primitive in the early 20th century.

Re: Japanning

Ernie Miller

>You don't need to bead blast to remove that stuff. a cheap $1 can of oven cleaner from the dollar store will do the trick. it will bubble off like the creature from the black lagoon. That stuf and a scotch brite will also do a good job of removing gunk froma saw blade.

Re: Japanning

woodburnbob

>I have a few broken plane parts around and a 605 with 10% japanning. I was looking at the Bedrock just the other day, marvelling at how a previous owner managed, presumably with a screwdriver, to "almost" prepare it for a "fresh coat", and then instead dump it on the market.

I'll try the oven cleaner today and be delighted if it works. My impression is that oven cleaner is some form or equivalent of sodium hydroxide, or lye. Good at decomposing fat. Thinking about it, I suppose it could work on oil based paints, since linseed oil is fat...linoleic acid chains that bond together by oxidation over time.

Actually, I suppose asphalt/tar/Gilsonite is composed of long carbon chains (like fat) with enough double bonds to form cross-linking like drying oils such as linseed.

I'll have to get out my japanning book, published about 100 years ago, that I discovered on Ebay for $5 a couple years ago. Really interesting book in that japanning at the time was a big industrial process meriting a kind of "industrial survey/textbook" book...like a book today on coatings or bullshit.

I'll check and see if they specifically avoided using japanning devices meant for conditions which were caustic (strong bases,lye, and so forth). Urine, I believe, ultimately yields a base (urea, ammonia, etc.). If oven cleaner works to take off japanning, I wonder if there isn't an even cheaper, sort of homeopathic, method at hand...so to speak? I'll start drinking some extra coffee this morning and perhaps try that too.

Thanks, Ernie.

Re: If it's old paint...

Ken in Sacramento

>Thanks, with mineral spirits, light scraping and elbow grease I got most of the paint off, just some small specks left. The knob I think will take a full strip and refinish.

Your welcome Ken,

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Glad to hear it cleaned up well. Most of the time I find it's better to scrape/ strip the knob and tote and then refinish them. Show us a pic when your done with it!