Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

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Corsetière
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Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by Corsetière »

Hey, just a heads up, I noticed Menards has the cheapest price on Citristrip at $15.99/ half gallon right now with their rebate. Looks like its good till Aug 18th....

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Sow's Ear Mal
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Re: Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by Sow's Ear Mal »

Never had much luck with that product. I'll take methyl chloride any day. ;)

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Corsetière
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Re: Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by Corsetière »

It did extremely well for me on the banister. I think it depends on what type of paint you are removing...
Mine had a base layer of shellac under a bunch of mostly latex (I believe?) paint so the Citristrip just melted everything off like butter.

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Re: Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by phil »

how do you get the product off? with the stronger stuff it pretty much evaporates off, and I guess you can use alcohol or mineral spirits to clean any traces that remain but with the citristrip which was an enviro product . it seemed to mix with the paint and It was like I was pushing this sort of greasy residue around. I was doing a removable handrail. I eventually took it outside and got the hose and a brush and scrubbed and then still had to use the strong stuff to try to get it all out of the pores... of course the hose treatment raised the grain. That was my only attempt with it. then I was getting the stronger stuff in 5 galllon pails. Lately I've just been using the heat gun and then the sander and no stripper. with stripper I found I was kind of pushing the dissolved pigments around and it would go in cracks and make more work. I felt I got faster at it but it may also have been that to begin with I was stripping things that had no shellac under and it goes way faster if you do have the shellac. The shellac sort of works like a buffer. The paint wont' get stuck in cracks if the cracks are full of shellac.

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Re: Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by Corsetière »

phil wrote:how do you get the product off? with the stronger stuff it pretty much evaporates off, and I guess you can use alcohol or mineral spirits to clean any traces that remain but with the citristrip which was an enviro product . it seemed to mix with the paint and It was like I was pushing this sort of greasy residue around. I was doing a removable handrail. I eventually took it outside and got the hose and a brush and scrubbed and then still had to use the strong stuff to try to get it all out of the pores... of course the hose treatment raised the grain. That was my only attempt with it. then I was getting the stronger stuff in 5 galllon pails. Lately I've just been using the heat gun and then the sander and no stripper. with stripper I found I was kind of pushing the dissolved pigments around and it would go in cracks and make more work. I felt I got faster at it but it may also have been that to begin with I was stripping things that had no shellac under and it goes way faster if you do have the shellac. The shellac sort of works like a buffer. The paint wont' get stuck in cracks if the cracks are full of shellac.



Yeah I have shellac under the layers of paint on my staircase. I used a garden sprayer with water and TSP to spray it down. Detail brushes and tooth brushes helped get the gunk out of the crevises and then I just mopped up the water. :)

What product are you using for paint on bare wood? I think the beadboard in the upstairs bath is this situation (or I have some sort of evil old paint formulation) because citristrip isn't touching it

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Re: Cheapest Price on Citristrip in US

Post by phil »

water is never good in refinishing , wetting the wood raises the grain and swells the wood. if things are glued the water may break the glue. of course you can get a piece of wood wet and still refinish it . and to explain more clearly also there are instances where a finisher may intentionally wet the wood to raise the grain and then as a next step do a final sanding . the reason for this is that if the wood gets wet again then the raising of the grain has already taken place. If you sand deep you'd have to repeat the process for it to have an effect but you might hear of wetting the wood to raise the grain during certain fine finishing processes. usually just with a damp rag. also the new water based polyurethanes have water in them so they can raise the grain while you are applying the finish which is an undesirable effect. you also may want o intentionally raise the grain in order to get paint to stick better and in that case the paint usually has enough thickness to compensate.

Mohawk carries a wood stripper similar to the circa 1885 which is common in building stores. you can get it in liquid or gel I prefer the gel and a 5 gallon bucket was about 100 bucks Canadian... 75 US I guess.. you can also find recipies to make your own strippers.

I looked on their website but couldnt' see the stripper but here is the remover that you can use after the stripper to clean any remnants

http://www.mohawk-finishing.com/catalog ... ictNbr=948

you could contact a dealer closer to you and ask about the stripper maybe enviro laws affect the distribution , not sure.

other than stripper you can try just using lacquer thinners or acetone, these are strong solvents , they evaporate fast so think about sparks and ventilation. but in some cases you can just do a wash with a rag and remove some paints or shellac for example. many times that is the least damaging. lets say if you had a shellac table and wanted to refinish it and keep the patina and so didnt' want o use hard tools like scrapers or sandpaper which would damage the patina.

I've stripped a lot of baseboards and many were from other houses so I've seen a pretty good variety. the worst is milk paint. the strippers or heat may soften it a little or melt into it with a lot of work but they don't really work on milk paint. It won't bubble the paint. The best way I have found is to remove the wood. then heat gun and putty knife, then use a sander. something like a belt sander with about 36 or 60 grit to bite through the paint and down through any darkened layer to fresh wood and then use finer paper. ( wearing a mask for sure) sometimes I take most off and put it through a thickness planer. then bulk up the thickness by adding a strip behind where it meets the wall. and re-cut the roundover. in some cases the backside of the baseboards can be refinished. the bottom strip can be anythign so even a strip of pine is fine for that one.
on stairs Ive used a variety of sanders scrapers a little corner sander. its a lot of work if you cant' take stuff apart. for anything like casings , baseboards etc I think it is a waste of time and way more aggravating to do those in place.

If you can move the piece to a solid work ench and clamp it down the ergonomics are better and you can put pressure on it at more favorable angles.
less fatigue means you get more done faster.
window sills and window frames must be done in place. sashes are best removed.
other than sanders a carbide scraper might help. get a good one with replaceable carbide blades and not one that is a piece of tin.
here's an example of a junk one,, its garbage. you may find old wooden ones that look like this.. save your money .

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/shop ... R&usqp=CAE


carbide scrapers :
https://www.google.ca/search?q=carbide+ ... 96&bih=557

for finer stuff and for finishing use a card scraper
lee valley has a nice set including tools to hold the card scraper and sharpen it and burnish it. You can get away with only the card scraper if budget is tight and you can file them in a vice and use a bit of hard steel like a screwdriver shank to form a burr on the cutting edge. this makes it cut faster with less effort. In general I use a putty knife with heat gun then a carbide scraper on painted wood then the card scraper when you are down to bare wood that doesn't have that hard surface. you can do a lot with the card scrapers and you can get different shapes and thicknesses to cope with things like moldings.

carbide steel can be sharpened. mot of these blades are sold as replaceable items , to sharpen them you need the right kind of stone, something like a carborandum stone ( usually these are green) will cut the carbide but the one that came on the grinder you bought from harbor freight or whatever wont' be a Carborundum stone and that kind of steel will laugh at it and you won't get anywhere. you can also use diamond grits and you can get diamond grit stones that you just rub by hand to keep them sharp.

a dirt cheap option to buying card scrapers it to sacrifice an old handsaw , you can cut it with a stone like a zip disk or masonary blade mounted to an angle grinder or in a tablesaw or circular saw. or you can use a dremil for contours and such. you want the metal to be springy but not so hard that you can't file it.. handsaws come in different thicknesses and sometimes you can find a cracked one or an old rusty one and that will work fine.

most of the carbide ones are pull scrapers, most of the card scrapers you push and hold with a bend in them. it requires some hand strength and for the piece to be solidly clamped down. you get your weight into it and push. the holder lee valley sells is handy and then you can also pull towards yourself when you get to corners and such. the holder keeps the bend in it and you can adjust the amount of bend with a thumbscrew. this reduces the amount of strength you need to work the tool properly.
here;s a little kit you can get for around 100 bucks if you want a new$100.00 toy toy it is worthwhile
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.a ... 10&p=61448

you can use a carbide pull scraper along with a heat gun but you can't use a cabinetmaker's scraper with a heat gun you'd just burn yourself and besides that, the tool requires both hands to operate. it will however produce a nice finish and it can remove more material more quickly than sanding. sandpaper tears the wood , that's how it works but the card scraper doesn't make dust , it cuts fine curls much like a hand plane and produces a better surface because it is being cut. if you use a hand plane for example to flatten a tabletop, then you can follow with a card scraper to level things out. there is nothing wrong with using sandpaper I just wanted to explain that it cuts differently.

it is entirely possible to stick a baseboard or casing into a sander or thickness planer and take the paint off. its very fast. the issue is it dulls the blades and makes the machine dirty so you need a machine owner that would cooperate with that. I usually try to get most of the paint off so it doesn't dull my blades so fast. it is also possible to use a sandblaster which will remove paint but also it will hog out hollows as the grainisnt' a consistent hardness. usually that isnt' how paint is removed from wood for this reason but in some cases it might be possible. oh say maybe you had a fence outside made of 4x4's and didn't care about the thickness or about hogging out the soft parts of the grain or maybe you fixed that after with a belt sander. you can also use sand or dry ice or walnut shells or glass beads as blasting media.

putting a baseboard through a thickness planer loses thickness. usually there is some cup or warp to them and that causes you to need to go deep enough to get a flat surface so your 1" baseboard might end up being 3/4" after about 3 passes. gluing strips to the back means the baseboard is then hollow behind but visually it makes no difference unless you can see the glue joint on the top strip where it meets the wall. If you can spare some of the board then sometimes this strip can be from the same board which will help hide the joint since it will be similar wood. if you go cut a strip from any old board you may see it. If you do a good job it can be invisible. some woods are more consistent so it's easier to hide. there is no need for the strength there it is purely visual so in my opinion a 3/4 board with built up edges compared to a 1" board is equal once installed. only the top edge can be seen. If you have to buy the wood and can only get 3/4" stock then this is a good option just buy them a little wider to allow the strip to come from the same plank.

of course you can't cheat like this if you have contoured baseboards. so they are more work.

last time I was trying to remove milk paint I posted and someone suggested trying ammonia. I tried and didn't find it worked for me but maybe you could try it just as an experiment.

another method that can work is just laying the planks on a wet lawn and leave them for a bit. they will curl and you can play with the curl by turnign them different ways. I had one that was about a foot wide and cupped by about 3/4" of an inch. so you can imagine how thin it would be by the time it was flat. I used a combination of laying it on the lawn and clamping it to dry with some added pressure in the way I clamped it and completely flattened that one,, so if you run into warpage you can try using dampness in your favor.
someone gave me a screen door that had a real twist in it and I clamped it with weights and things and wrapped the parts I wanted to move with wet rags. it worked. that door is pretty flat now. I guess there is a possibility you might accomplish something by laying a wet milk painted board on the wet grass for a couple days, maybe that would break the paint down the milk paint so it is easily scraped. or maybe steam would help. no doubt it can be tenacious stuff to get through. of course if you lay it on the damp grass on a sunny day the wet side expands and the dry side contracts and that will cause it to bend, hopefully in your favor. ifthe wood is nailed in place and you use water on it you aren't really going ot hurt the wood much. if you soak it in water and leave it to allow the water to creep into the board then you may see some warping that is noticible. If you use water wiht a scrub brush to clean your wood after the citristrip then you should be ok just try to allow it to dry out again after you do that. I wouldn't use it on a tebletop but maybe you are ok if it works for you and it is less toxic to work with then great. maybe my explanation was a bit long ;-)

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