______Comm-line ______
The newsletter of Advanced Re-enameling Systems
12-8-02
Issue 3
The Stripper!
Catching up
Hi folks,
I hope you are all well.
I am back after a period of study into another aspect of the business and some accompanying hard work. Thanks for your responses to past issues and particularly to those who have taken up using our systems. I am delighted you are so pleased with them.
I have promised some of you that I would issue newsletters on certain subjects and since there has been a delay on this Commline project I am going to dig into the manual and knock them out in quick succession so as to keep my promise.
I am working on setting these issues up on a restricted, trade only, web site for reference purposes so you don’t have to file the paper!
I received a call from Simon at The Lab concerning one of our products “Isofree”, our Isocyanate free enamel coating. Apparently they also sell a product under that name but it is not the same substance – being imported from America whereas ours is manufactured here in England. So same name but different coating from different places. They both function similarly though and both work equally well with our Permabond adhesion promoter. I agreed with Simon that although we had used this name for over ten years that I’d refer to our substance slightly differently to avoid confusion so from now on I will call it by its full name “Isocyanate Free Enamel” rather than its shortened form so as to discriminate.
Feel free to call me at any time for a chat about the business or to discuss technical or administrative issues. Best to get me on the mobile – Tel: 07967182599. To place orders continue to call Richard on 01314667667.
Now for the subject of this issue of Commline.
Imagine this – it’s a lovely day, you are on the way to a bath and you want to finish early. You hope that it’s a nice and straightforward one and the client certainly gave you this impression. You arrive at the job only to discover that someone else has been there before. The prior re-enamelling is not in good shape; it’s going to need stripped. It’s a hellish feeling.
A strip job is probably the most infamous and hated chore in the bath refurb field.
There are three things that make the dreaded stripper dreaded:
1. Messy, sweaty hard graft.
2. The smell of stripper can send you reeling.
3. Unpredictability
4. Added time
These jobs are never going to be a pleasure but perhaps I can offer a few tips from our manual that can soften it up for you.
The first thing that definitely helps is to know before you go. During the initial inquiry cross-examine the client to find out if his bath has been done before. If you ascertain that it has, it is useful to find out who did it and when. One can get to know the types of systems being used by others operating in your area, how they tend to strip or indeed if they can be salvaged without stripping.
Charging well for carrying out the strip always removes some of the discouragement. If we send a guy to do a job and it is not down for a strip but turns out to be so, he knows to call the office right away and have the office manager reprice the job before proceeding.
Next is the psyche up. You have to be in the right frame of mind to tackle the job effectively. The best frame of mind is to assume a positive willingness to confront this bath in front of you anew, which is to say you look ahead to the completion of the job in hand not back to the last three nightmare strippers you staggered away from half conscious.
I’ve got to tell - I’ve stripped a few baths in my time. The largest number was 22 consecutive strippers in a hotel on one day. I think that I had so much stripper solvent in my blood stream by the time that I arrived at the last one that I no longer could feel the pain. By the 20th bath I was so in the groove that I could strip the bath clean in 20 min. My face had a red goulish tinge for days afterwards as though I’d slept under a sun lamp.
The worst was a stripper, but not as we’ve come know it. I had just done a perfect job on a private bath – unmasked it and was admiring it before showing it to the customer. Behind the bath they had 12” by 12” mirror tiles. As I admired the bath a tile from about five feet above the bath fell off and smashed into a thousand splinters into the soft chewy enamel. What a heart breaker. The solvent in the air had loosened the tile adhesive. I couldn’t face doing anything about it right then, the loss was so great, so I came back the next day and stripped it with the glass fragments protruding. By the time I was done the bath was red and my gloved hands looked like I’d stuck them in a mincer!
Anyway.
Something that makes a job like this easier to confront and handle is a set procedure that you can use to methodically tackle it. I will outline ours later but such a checklist gives you definite steps towards completion so that one need only confront the step one is on rather than the totality of the job. Before you embark on the stripping procedure it is worthwhile to run through the pre strip routine – sounds sexy eh?
Pre strip Routine
Inspection
The first action is inspection. Don’t just dump on the stripper and go for a smoke with the fixed idea that it must be stripped simply because it has been done before.
Find out anything you can from the customer about the previous resurfacing. When was it done, method used, how long it took before they could use it etc? You may find out you did it yourself! If you know who did the bath and how it was done you can predict how easy it will be to strip.
What seems wrong with it now is another clue as to how it should be dealt with. If it is badly and easily peeling you know the bond is weak and it will need to be stripped. But it may be that it was done properly over a priming system that will let you feather out the edge of the damage. Our Interface II vitreous enamel primer for example displays what we call a soft bond between the coating and the bath. It is engineered this way to provide two valuable functions. Firstly if the bath ever gets badly damaged for some exterior reason the coating will feather off avoiding stripping duties and secondly if it is so hammered that it does need stripped the coating easily separates from the primer avoiding endless and frustrating scraping and sanding.
The major weakness with most systems is adhesion to the base of the bath so you need to determine if this is OK or not. If the base is basically sound by which I mean held on as opposed to chipped, (a chipped surface does not mean weak adhesion.) there will be a performance advantage to be gained by going over it anew. It is a fact that a thicker surface will protect the bond. It also saves the misery of a strip.
Signs of adhesion failure are blisters large or tiny. The best way to get them to reveal themselves is to fill the bath with hot water. This expands them.
If the original job was done ten years ago and is not lifting one can assume that the adhesion is fine and going over it again will be ok.
If there is no sign of weak adhesion check for a crummy spray job. If the spray job is poor it has likely been done by someone who does not set a high standard and this casts suspicion over the standard of adhesion also. Don't risk going over bad workmanship.
The only times you do not strip are if you can see the bath was done with a good system and it is not peeling with adhesion failure. If in doubt strip for if you don't and it does go wrong it will be a double strip!! The only exception to this is the bath where the adhesion to the top and sides is OK but not on the bottom. If this is the case and if the rest is really held on with a hard bond you can just remove the coating from the base. This is pretty risky and best done without stripper. Bear in mind also that it could take you longer to feather out the remaining edge (if you can) than it would to strip. You really need a bit of experience to make this judgement.
The criteria for determining if the rest is really held on is, does it feather out at the edge or flake and break? If it flakes and breaks strip the lot, as the new coating will get under that edge and cause lifting and distortion. You may consider that you could stick down the edge with filler but that will cause you more work than stripping and may cause problems on re-coating.
Another point of inspection is: can this bath be done? There is a genre of bath called a zinc bath, which was never vitreous- enamelled in the first place. The principle with them was that you gave them a coat of paint once a year. By the time you arrive on the scene there will be thirty rotten coats of paint on it held on by a layer of rust with big holes going back to the zinc alloy. Walk away. On one occasion I had a guy on one for three days with a blowlamp! If the customer pleads, you could patch it up so it looks better than it does but tell them there is no guarantee and that it will not look like a new bath when you are done. They may very well be quite happy with this.
By the way, Interface 2, our enamel primer, will stick to the zinc alloy if the customer has done the stripping himself or horror of horrors you find only metal below when you take the coating off what looks like a regular roll top! Pitch a tent buddy, your going to be solvent wiping that metal substrate for a while before it will take priming that has any hope of longevity.
Evaluation
This means making up your mind based on the information you have found out from the customer and your inspection. If you consider you can get away without stripping you have to be absolutely certain that 1. The preparation will not take longer than actually stripping and
2. The system you are going over is totally sound.
There is no point in chancing it; you could end up with a whole lot more work.
Assuming you decide to do a full strip, which is the way it is going to go in the majority of cases – here is a procedure. I am not presuming that this is the best procedure. Yours may be superior but this is a workable one.
Equipment list
High power stripper. We supply “Hot Strip” which is perfect for the job and much faster than regular strippers. (Call me on 07967182599 for details)
A flat edged paint scraper.
A triangular paint scraper.
Extendable knife
Modified blade scraper: this is essential so buy one from us, then find a supplier near you when you know what it looks like.
Newspapers.
A broad paint brush 6" - 8".
Gauntlet (up the arm length) natural rubber gloves.
Stripper tray, this is the bottom cut out of a 5l plastic container.
Air fed mask.
Cartridge mask
Dust sheets.
Procedure
Bring your equipment into the bathroom.
Put down your dustsheets, as this is a messy job.
Set up your breathing mask, since the smell of the stripper is very bad and can make you dizzy.
If there is a plastic strip around the bath or it has a plastic panel mask it otherwise the stripper will attack it.
Put on your air fed mask and gloves making sure your arms are covered. If not you will be yelping “ouch” before long.
Pour stripper into the bath laying it on in an oval around the base where it curves up to the sides. Take your paint brush and paste it up from the bottom in even sweeps until the sides and the plug and back end are done then do the base and finally the top shoulder doing the near shoulder last otherwise you will lean over it.
Pour on more stripper as necessary to get a good even coat.
Remove other objects from the room so that dust sheeting is easy.
It may take about 10 - 15 minutes to blister the old material. Just let it get on with it and do other set up activities or service your gun while waiting.
Return to the bathroom. If you can hear that the blistering has stopped, but there are areas where it has not lifted put on more stripper and leave the room. The point here is to let the stripper do the work!
Once the blistering action has stopped, start scraping off the old surface with the blade scraper. Start with the outside of the shoulders. Do these outside edges first while having a newspaper on the floor under the area you are scraping to catch the scrapings. Once all the outside of the shoulders have been done work your way into the bath by doing the top of the shoulder you will be leaning over first, then the others flicking the old paint into the base of the bath. Keep the newspaper moving around the exterior of the bath to collect falling bits. Continue to do the shoulders of the bath working your way around the tub. You are starting at the highest parts so that the old material falls down into the bath.
Make use of the different scraping implements to get at all parts effectively. A methodical approach like “working an edge” from one part of the bath around to where you started from works best rather than randomly going from bit to bit.
Scrape it well until most of your sludge is in the base of the bath. Scrape the base of the bath and pull all the scrapings together. Put your newspaper in the base of the bath and place the collected sludge into it.
If there is still material that has not moved, give it another coat as before and re-scrape. You need to get it scraped to the point where any remainder can be removed with the scourer or sanding. Scrap any remainders and put it in the newspaper, fold up the paper and discard it in the bin
Now spray the bath down with hot water to get rid of small bits of stripped paint and residual stripper. A hose that fits on the hot tap is useful here to direct a flow of hot water all round the bath. A lot of fragments will go and the remaining stripper will sizzle. While holding the hose in one hand use a heavy-duty scourer to tear away any leavings. We supply heavy-duty scourers if you can’t find them.