How to remove paint from metal at home

Even the most expen­sive and high-qual­i­ty paint intend­ed for met­al objects is not eter­nal. Over time, under the influ­ence of exter­nal fac­tors, it becomes unus­able, it can begin to peel off and “peel off”, rust spots appear through the coat­ing lay­er, and the met­al prod­uct itself already looks unpre­sentable. In this case, you can per­form anoth­er paint­ing, but the old lay­er must be removed. Also, sit­u­a­tions often occur when the col­or­ing com­po­si­tion acci­den­tal­ly gets on the prod­uct, dries up and spoils its appear­ance. There­fore, in this arti­cle, our experts decid­ed to review sev­er­al effec­tive meth­ods that allow you to remove paint from met­al at home.

Preparatory stage and security measures

In order for the pro­ce­dure to be car­ried out cor­rect­ly and the prop­er­ty or health of the employ­ee was not dam­aged in the process, you need to pre­pare. These mea­sures include:

1. Pur­chase of all nec­es­sary equip­ment, tools, chem­i­cals — depend­ing on the cho­sen method of met­al clean­ing. Every­thing that you may need should already be at your fin­ger­tips at the time of the start of work, since if you con­stant­ly buy the nec­es­sary things, you will end­less­ly remove the coat­ing, espe­cial­ly if the amount of work is large.

2. Pro­tec­tion of sur­round­ing objects (if they can­not be moved) and sur­faces from dust and dirt, which will inevitably appear when you remove paint from met­al. For pro­tec­tion, you can use a plas­tic film.

3. Pre­pare per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for those who will remove the coat­ing and help in this mat­ter. The min­i­mum required set for each work­er includes plas­tic gog­gles, a res­pi­ra­tor and thick but com­fort­able gloves that will not hin­der move­ment.

4. Pre­pare the met­al itself for pro­cess­ing. It is nec­es­sary, if pos­si­ble, to remove all dirt, dust, paint residues that peel off with­out much effort. If you plan to treat with house­hold chem­i­cals, it is rec­om­mend­ed to clean the sur­face with a stiff brush. This will help the sol­vent to pen­e­trate the lay­ers of paint faster, and the process will speed up.

If you intend to remove paint from small items that can be trans­port­ed on your own, it is bet­ter to take them out into the yard and car­ry out pro­cess­ing already there.

After com­plet­ing all the prepara­to­ry stages, you can get to work. The pro­ce­dure is car­ried out in three ways — mechan­i­cal, ther­mal and chem­i­cal. In some cas­es, you need to use sev­er­al meth­ods in par­al­lel or sequen­tial­ly in order to achieve the desired result.

Mechanical methods

The mechan­i­cal method is lit­er­al­ly “tear­ing off” the paint from the met­al using phys­i­cal force and cer­tain tools. The most prim­i­tive tool that can be used is a spat­u­la, but it will only be effec­tive if the sur­face is even, has no hard-to-reach places, and the paint lay­er is pre-soft­ened with a chem­i­cal agent. You can also use sand­pa­per. But it is more ratio­nal to use a spe­cial elec­tric tool with noz­zles with abra­sive coat­ings. It can be a drill, grinder or grinder.

If you have a drill, you can buy these types of brush­es for pro­cess­ing a met­al sur­face:

1. Radi­al — designed to remove paint in places that are dif­fi­cult to access.

2. Cylin­dri­cal. Such a nar­row brush will allow you to treat sur­faces in a lim­it­ed space.

3. The disk is indis­pens­able for pro­cess­ing ver­ti­cal­ly locat­ed sur­faces. The design of the prod­uct assumes that a wire is locat­ed around the entire cir­cum­fer­ence of the base, with which the part is ground.

4. Cup is effec­tive for pro­cess­ing hor­i­zon­tal parts and remov­ing a thick lay­er of paint from met­al. Its base is made in the form of a cup with a recess in which the wire is attached.

When choos­ing a suit­able brush, do not for­get about the diam­e­ter of the work­ing sur­face of the prod­uct and the mate­r­i­al of the work­ing ele­ments — it should be wire, not nylon.

If you plan to use a grinder or a grinder, you can buy one or sev­er­al wheel options:

1. Petal — used to remove a thick lay­er of paint and par­tial­ly met­al.

2. From CD mate­r­i­al — suit­able for remov­ing a small lay­er, leav­ing a min­i­mum amount of scratch­es on the met­al.

3. Cibo wheels — small abra­sive grain, plus a thin nylon thread help to work del­i­cate­ly, with­out touch­ing the met­al, but only remov­ing the top lay­er of paint.

And do not for­get that the mechan­i­cal pro­cess­ing of met­al from paint is accom­pa­nied by the for­ma­tion of a large num­ber of small par­ti­cles, which, if they enter the mucous mem­branes, in the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, can be harm­ful, there­fore both glass­es and a res­pi­ra­tor must fit snug­ly against the skin.

Tools will help to remove the col­or­ing com­po­si­tion, but if you need to work out the cor­ners and very small details, you will have to use the same spat­u­la and / or sand­pa­per.

Heat Treatment Methods

Remov­ing paint from met­al using a heat treat­ment method is per­haps the eas­i­est method to solve the prob­lem, but only if you have a pow­er­ful build­ing hair dry­er. You can also use appli­ances such as a blow­torch or iron. Under the influ­ence of heat, the coat­ing will begin to melt, after which it will not be dif­fi­cult to remove it with a spat­u­la. The ther­mal method is not suit­able for clean­ing cast iron, brass and alu­minum prod­ucts, as well as thin sheet ele­ments, as they can be deformed due to high tem­per­a­tures.

Con­sid­er the fea­tures of using tools of dif­fer­ent types:

1. 
   Build­ing hair dry­er — Ver­sa­tile and very handy. Thanks to the nar­row noz­zle, the hot air jet can be direct­ed to the most inac­ces­si­ble places. The device heats the air to the desired tem­per­a­ture quick­ly, the paint leaves quite eas­i­ly, in large pieces.

2. 
   Blow­torch — the device dur­ing oper­a­tion gives out an open flame in which the paint burns. Residues can be cleaned with a stiff brush. But you need to act care­ful­ly so as not to get burned and not vio­late the integri­ty of the struc­ture being processed.

3. 
   Iron will help to remove paint from met­al in the most time-con­sum­ing and inef­fi­cient way. The tem­per­a­ture of the sole may be bare­ly enough for the coat­ing to begin to melt. An iron is used only in extreme cas­es for pro­cess­ing small flat met­al sur­faces. Before start­ing the pro­ce­dure, foil is placed under the sole of the device so as not to stain the instru­ment itself.

If, after ther­mal treat­ment, there are still small residues of paint on the met­al sur­face that could not be removed even with a spat­u­la, it is removed with a sol­vent.

We use household chemicals

If you do not have the right tools at hand, you can still solve the prob­lem. It is enough to buy a pro­fes­sion­al sol­vent or the so-called “wash” to get rid of the paint on the met­al. Here are a few rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this class of chem­i­cals: KUDO aerosol (520 ml for 2,5 dol­lars), Veslee Remover aerosol (450 ml for 2 dol­lars), Syn­tirol (1 kg for 5 dol­lars).

The sequence of actions for remov­ing the coat­ing with chem­i­cals:

1. The prepara­to­ry stage — we clean the sur­face as much as pos­si­ble from dust and dirt.

2. We apply the drug. It is most con­ve­nient to use the prod­uct in the form of an aerosol, but it can also be applied with a paint brush.

3. We wait as long as indi­cat­ed in the instruc­tions. The expo­sure time may vary depend­ing on the thick­ness of the paint lay­er. And also depend­ing on the pow­er of the drug. Accord­ing­ly, the expo­sure time can take from sev­er­al min­utes to sev­er­al hours.

4. When the paint soft­ens, begins to bub­ble and move away from the met­al, remove it with a spat­u­la and a stiff brush.

5. For a com­plete clean­ing of the sur­face, we treat it with a sol­vent, for exam­ple, ace­tone, puri­fied gaso­line.

6. We wash with water.

All sol­vents have a very pun­gent odor, so it is rec­om­mend­ed to work out­doors or indoors, where you can open doors and sev­er­al win­dows, or sim­ply have a ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem.

How paint is removed depending on its type

In prin­ci­ple, any paint can be removed by a mechan­i­cal, ther­mal or chem­i­cal treat­ment method or a com­bi­na­tion there­of. But in some cas­es, cer­tain meth­ods of purifi­ca­tion are prefer­able:

1. A thin lay­er of oil paint is removed with a sol­vent, a thick lay­er is removed mechan­i­cal­ly, the coat­ing is burned out in the most inac­ces­si­ble places.

2. Acrylic paint after strip­ping with a stiff brush can be washed off with a sol­vent, for exam­ple, ace­tone.

3. It is bet­ter to burn pow­der paint, and if this is not pos­si­ble, a wash should be used.

4. Spray paint is eas­i­ly removed with a brush, sand­pa­per and thin­ner.

In order to avoid mis­takes when per­form­ing clean­ing work, it is impor­tant to know not only the type of paint, but also what kind of met­al the prod­uct is made of. As already men­tioned, the ther­mal impact on objects made of brass and cast iron leads to their dete­ri­o­ra­tion.

How to remove paint from metal gates and fences

In order to remove the coat­ing from ver­ti­cal sur­faces, you will need a grinder with appro­pri­ate noz­zles, brush­es with met­al bris­tles to work out hard-to-reach places, and a sol­vent. It is bet­ter to use a chem­i­cal agent with a thick con­sis­ten­cy, since liq­uid agents will flow down before the nec­es­sary reac­tion occurs, they may be inef­fec­tive.

The sequence of actions is as fol­lows:

1. Clean the fence and gate of all con­t­a­m­i­nants.

2. Treat sur­faces with a grinder where pos­si­ble.

3. Brush hard-to-reach places such as joints, welds, cor­ners, loops, etc.

4. Remove paint residue with sol­vent.

Work is rec­om­mend­ed to be car­ried out in good weath­er, since dur­ing strong winds, rain, it will not be pos­si­ble to car­ry out the pro­ce­dure qual­i­ta­tive­ly.

Advice! If you have removed the paint from a met­al fence with thin rods and want to repaint it, but do not want to spend a lot of time pro­cess­ing the numer­ous details of the fence, put down the brush and arm your­self with a sponge. Put on rub­ber gloves, on top of ordi­nary fab­ric gloves, like work­ers, dip the sponge into a can of paint, wring it out light­ly, and start stain­ing. Using a sim­ple sponge, you quick­ly and effi­cient­ly paint over all the small­est details, process all cor­ners and nodes, hard-to-reach places.