Build Your Own Infrared Paint Remover

December 12, 2006 5:22 PM

Removing layers upon layers of old paint? What a royal pain in the a$$. But now there's a relatively painless way! Silent Paint Remover. The bad news? $400-$500. Too rich for you, Bunkie? Well, God Bless The Internets.
posted by spock (21 comments total)

Why not just use an electric heat stripper? I've used one for twenty years without any problem and they only cost $40.
posted by octothorpe at 5:40 PM on December 12, 2006

Before the Safety Police come along and say 'projects with electrcity can be dangerous' I'd like to say 'nice post.'
posted by fixedgear at 5:40 PM on December 12, 2006

octothorpe from the FAQ section of the last link: A quartz rod throws out strong infrared radiation. When you're standing in a sunny window on a cold winter day, your face can still feel the heat of the sun, even though the sun is millions of miles away and the space between you and the sun may be 10 degrees F. This is true infrared radiation being absorbed by your skin. Quartz rods throw off this type of radiation which is absorbed by the paint without using the air in between as a medium to carry the heat. This is what makes them such wonderful heaters. When applied to paint, this radiation warms the paint slowly, through and through, allowing it to soften and lift off the wood. My hypothesis is that resistive oven elements don't throw off much infrared -they heat more by convection, heating the air around them, which in turn heats the paint, therefore, you end up scorching the surface of the paint or completely melting it too quickly.
posted by spock at 6:00 PM on December 12, 2006

Wife calling you crazy: free
Parts: $40
Money Saved: $400
Watching wife enjoy stripping paint: Priceless.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:23 PM on December 12, 2006

Spock, thanks. I realized after I posted my comment that I sounded snarky and dismissive but I was actually trying to ask why this thing is better. I'm probably going to dive back into victorian/edwardian house restoration in a year or two so I might try to build one of these things.
posted by octothorpe at 7:01 PM on December 12, 2006

octothorpe: I too am wondering how this is different from my heat gun
posted by allelopath at 7:05 PM on December 12, 2006

I've seen this a couple times at home and garden shows and it looks pretty nifty but the price is way out (made in Europe). Maybe this will inspire someone to make a cheaper American competitor. Paint stripping with a heat gun can be downright dangerous, lead fumes can make you immediately sick, seen it happen, took someone I know out for about a month, the paint was layered on a door since 1872.
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 PM on December 12, 2006

It's different from a heat gun in that it doesn't give off fumes, takes the paint off cleaner, faster and safer.
posted by stbalbach at 7:45 PM on December 12, 2006

Having scraped many a wall with the ol' heat tool, and seen a couple of small fires due to it, and seeing a heat-gun related fire that destroyed a porch (not ours!), I'm very intrigued.

It's got to be just as dangerous to leave on too long, and scorched wood isn't pretty even if you don't start a fire. But it's probably a lot safer in the long run.
posted by dhartung at 7:50 PM on December 12, 2006

Back when I did this kind of stuff professionally but just starting out, I worked for a contractor for about six months who had us do all our paint stripping with propane torches. We'd climb the ladders with a five gallon bucket in one hand and a pot of primer in the other. The bucket contained a torch, a fire extinguisher, 50 grit sandpaper and a scraper. You'd heat the paint with the torch, scrap it off, sand it and prime it all in one ladder move.

There were just so many ways that we were violating safety regulations that I'm amazed that no one died or we didn't burn down a house. Just the fact that you had to climb a 28 or 40 foot ladder with both hands full was dangerous enough. I probably inhaled half a dozen lifetimes of lead fumes doing that but don't seem to have done any permanent damage. So for me, electric heat guns were a big step up in safety.
posted by octothorpe at 8:14 PM on December 12, 2006

Comparison of infrared to other methods and the Benefits of Infrared Heat.
posted by spock at 8:37 PM on December 12, 2006

Please don't use propane torches to strip paint.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:54 PM on December 12, 2006

*drools at the possibilities...
I really wish I could just wiggle my nose and all the trim in my old house would be stripped of the years of rental paint that blanket them.
posted by dog food sugar at 8:57 PM on December 12, 2006

Awesome ingenuity masked behind a really horrible web interface. Whoever thought using dhtml to display images like that should be shot, strung up, and shot again. The homebrew IPR is nice, though.

Octothorpe: how did you not die doing that? Honestly.
posted by boo_radley at 9:03 PM on December 12, 2006

Good lord, I wish I had known about this before helping a friend of mine strip (literally) 20+ layers of paint from the interior windowsills in her circa 1910 row-house. We used heat guns, caustic chemicals, 'green' stripping agents, and nothing really worked very well.

We eventually just donned respirators and sanded the hell out of the surfaces. Never again!
posted by GriffX at 11:34 PM on December 12, 2006

Compared to the work it saves, even the expensive store-bought tool seems worth the price if you're going to strip a house full of old paint on nice wood.
posted by pracowity at 12:30 AM on December 13, 2006

Octothorpe: how did you not die doing that? Honestly.

That was pretty minor compared to the high-wire circus stuff that I did or saw done: standing on six foot stepladders sitting on top of 40' high scaffolds, tying two ladders together because the boss is too cheap to rent a 60' ladder, lying on your stomach on the roof reaching over the edge to paint the top trim, climbing out third floor dormer windows to stand in the box gutter to paint the sides of the dormer, etc.

It was good incentive for me to go back to school to finish my CS degree so that I could get a job that didn't have a high risk of falling to my death or inhaling brain dissolving chemicals.
posted by octothorpe at 7:41 AM on December 13, 2006

Lots of people do die every year in "improvised scaffolding device" accidents
posted by delmoi at 8:11 AM on December 13, 2006

There are at least nine different ways to strip paint. Each branch of the military uses from three to five "approved" methods, the last time I checked. Experimentation is the key.

I had about twenty-five years of various kinds of outdoor paint welded to a concrete faux-cobblestone surface. I tried scraping, heat guns, solvents, spinning steel wool, and giant rotating things that slammed the paint off and sent sparks shooting about five feet. Nothing that wasn't going to take a hundred hours or more to pull off of this porch and walkway.

Eventually, I used a mixture of turpentine and a caustic gel paint remover, covered over the whole surface, then used plastic sheets to keep it damp overnight. After that, it was just three hours with a powerwasher. The concrete was so spotless you could see the pores.

There's just no one size fits all paint removal method.
posted by adipocere at 8:14 AM on December 13, 2006

Lots of people do die every year in "improvised scaffolding device" accidents

... some of whom are lucky enough to have their wacky antics photographed (via).
posted by hangashore at 8:22 AM on December 13, 2006 [1 favorite]

Originally manufactured and sold in Sweden as the SpeedHeater Infrared Paint Remover. The House in Progress diary has a favorable review of the Silent Paint Remover (but sometimes they melt.)

A wet heat method is steam paint removal [more details and videos].
posted by cenoxo at 3:34 PM on December 13, 2006