I’ve only found one thing that Citristrip wouldn’t strip. Powder coat on a computer case.
It’s had no problem stripping whatever paint I needed including polyurethane. It may take longer but not dealing with the chemicals in conventional stripper is worth it to me. I don’t buy all the VOC and PC that chemicals are all bad mantra that we hear today and the 40 pages of warnings nonsense, but the chemicals in normal strippers are no joke.
Agreed totally. I used MEK years ago to strip one rifle and I swear to God I used elbow long thick rubber chemical resistant gloves and still felt like my fingers and forearms had been sunburned by the end of the project.
Is there any kind of clearcoat that might help with that? Can Krylon or plastic survive Cerakote baking? (Application is I’m using Krylon just like the Canadians did on my C8-to-be, until I find a passable Duracoat/Cerakote mimic.)
I’d suggest you look at Norell’s Moly Resin for an inexpensive, easy to apply, durable finish - https://molyresin.com/
I get great results and I am a complete klutz when it comes to anything painting.
bought a couple of the SARCO M16A1 kits, the uppers had several coats of black BBQ paint on them. I had some OLD citristrip… had been sitting in my shop for several years. Took the bottle down, shook it up well, slathered the uppers with about 3 separate coats, with a couple hours set time between coats. Then took both a plastic scraper and a kitchen scrub brush and started peeling it off. Took all of it off on one upper, had a couple of places where it stayed on another one and i could have gotten all of that off with another coat, if i had cared to. But it adds to the character and a lot of the anodizing is off that upper anyway so who cares.
i did not use a hose afterword but i did spray most off with a brake cleaner. A couple weeks later there was some white powder residue in some nooks that just needed a small brush, some gun oil and qtip/toothpicking to get off. was very easy to clean.
anyway, citristrip just works. Some people either ignore it or discount it because it will usually take more than one coat. But if you can do 3 coats in a few hours and get it off, its a win in my book.
MEK is nasty shiite. It’s a great thinner/solvent but I swear I can feel my organs shutting down when I have to use it, which is almost every day haha
It really does work well. I did a tutorial on how to apply it 10 years ago, or probably longer.