[VAL] Stripper for aluminum paint? RemovAll Removes All!

[John Sellers <sellersj@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Gang,

Two weeks ago I posted a plaintive email to the VAList saying that the
PO had put aluminum paint on our trailer, and the only way that we had
found to remove it was paint stripper scrubbed off with steel wool.

I've gotten older and smarter in the last couple of weeks.

Upon the advice from several on the list, I ordered a gallon of RemovAll
220 from Down to Earth Products ( www.dtep.com ).  Incidentally, their
customer service was outstanding--they shipped the next day despite
having to work out a shipping address problem over the phone.

I applied RemovAll to one panel of the 'Stream and let it sit
overnight.  The next morning it didn't look like it had done anything. 
I morosely scrubbed it off with soap and water.  No paint appeared to
have come off, but the surface sure looked a lot cleaner than it had. 
About that time I noticed that the surface _felt_ like aluminum, too,
rather than paint.

It dawned on me that maybe what we _thought_ was aluminum paint was
really a rather crudely brushed-on clear coat over oxidized aluminum.

The one way to tell for sure was to see if the RemovAll-stripped panel
would polish with Nuvite.  (The polish doesn't work on paint or clear
coat--it has have an aluminum surface to work right.)  The surface
polished!  So what we have been scrubbing off with steel wool wasn't
aluminum paint--it was a combination of clear coat and aluminum oxide. 
Obviously the next experiment to try was to strip a panel with one of
the old-fashioned strippers we had been using--but without the steel
wool--and see if the stripped surface would polish.  It also polished.

So--my assumption that we were trying to remove aluminum paint was
faulty, and we have unnecessarily spent umpteen hours of scrubbing with
steel wool.  We can strip the clear coat with stripper and polish off
the oxide with the compounding buffer.  On the bright side (no pun
intended. . .) our labor has not been completely wasted.  It takes three
or four passes with Nuvite F7 to polish the aluminum oxide off of a
stripped panel, while one or two passes nicely shines up one of the
steel-wooled panels.  (I'm hoping we've dodged the bullet on rust stains
from the steel wool.  None have shown up yet, even after a few rains.)

RemovAll is the slickest paint remover I've ever used!  RemovAll 220 is
a peach-colored gel having practically no odor.  It is essentially
innocuous to everything except paint--you don't need rubber gloves, etc.
to work with it.  You brush it on the surface and let it sit several
hours or overnight.  It's thick and sticky enough to stay put where you
brush it even on vertical surfaces.  I have been washing it off with
soapy water and a soft scrub brush, and that's all there is to it.  The
clear coat comes off with the RemovAll and what's left is a clean
(although in the case of our trailer, heavily oxidized) aluminum
surface.  (Incidentally, RemovAll also de-bonds excess Vulkem squished
out of the seams.)  

If I had realized how much better our trailer would look with the cruddy
old clear coat removed--and how easy it would be to remove it with
RemovAll--I would have stripped it when we first got the trailer two
years ago!

Best,
John & Barb Sellers
WBCCI/VAC #1587
1960 Pacer
Dayton, Ohio