I promised I would tell you about the 'Nuclear Warhead' that was on it's way as soon as possible. Well, the A-Bomb arrived Saturday morning!! Unfortunately it wasn't until Sunday before I could try it out.
What is this nuke that lays waste to paint you ask? Well let me tell you about it.
This bad-boy of the power tool world is called the Paint Shaver Pro. You can find all the info about it here.
Go to the page and you'll find three video links a little from the top - they are well worth the time to watch. Another excellent video is on YouTube and was made by Scevoli Painting, and can be found here.
This is a general picture of the Paint Shaver Pro I got from the web. It gives a better view of the business end than I could produce.You should be able to see the round head with the cutting blades. The blades are three tiny carbide triangles with rounded angles.
Wicked, and vicious, looking sucker ain't it?
This is the one I got.
It came from a couple just north of us here in Kansas. They bought it from a guy off eBay but listed it on Craigslist when it became apparent they didn't have time to strip and paint their house.
We will not discuss they cost... Let's just say these things are so pricey that there is a thriving secondary market out there and even these are not cheap.
Let's see what this monster can do to our paint here at the Folly!!
Here is a section of wall on the east side of the porch, just south of the dining room's bay window.Nice, grungy, and nasty!
And here is a section from the same spot after the Paint Shaver was used.This took a little over 2 minutes!!
After using this tool you do have to sand the boards because the planning leaves it rough. You should do this anyway so that wasn't a big deal. Also, if you are not careful you can really mess-up a board or create deep gouges in it.
One does need to practice some before using the tool, which I did on some old painted doors, and adjust the cutting depth to what's needed. Due to the various thicknesses of paint on the house this will need to be done periodically.
Oh yeah - another cool thing is that the paint Shaver will remove the paint from the underside of the top lap at the same time. this takes practice, and adjusting as well.
One major, MAJOR, caveat is safety. One should play it safe when using any tool, especially power tools, but this one is different. Let's just say that if your not careful, and your fingers get in the way...well, do you remember that scene in 'Fargo' where the guy fed the other guy into the limb shredder?
SWMBO cringes at the thought.
All-n-all this bad-boy is well worth the investment. I can't wait to see how fast I can get a side knocked down. I'll keep you posted.
Till next time...
Cheers!
Larry ~
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9 comments:
The Paint Shaver is pretty awesome when you can use it, but it has a couple of drawbacks according to that paint seminar.
One is that it doesn't work unless the siding is perfectly flat. This isn't too much of a problem for us old-house folks (especially with quartersawn siding), but anybody with modern siding has a problem... either it's fake stuff with stupid woodgrain texture, or it's stuff that was sold green and has cupped.
The other potential problem, and it's the one we've actually got, is that if there are nailheads in the siding at paint level they'll eat blades like crazy. A previous owner of our house was really, really fond of sixteen-penny nails (you'll see horror-story pictures in my blog as we take the vinyl off this spring), and the nailheads aren't even flush, much less countersunk.
Fortunately, from what we can tell there's not very much paint under the siding, so the only stripping we'll have to do will be on some still-exposed bits (the porch columns are gatored like crazy, and it will be interesting to see the layers of color that turn up).
Nail-pulling and nail-hole patching, on t'other hand? We got a *lot* of that ahead of us.
If you get around those problems, Mr. Yapp described some pretty awesome things about the critter, including its ability to strip only specific layers of paint and leave older ones intact. It sounds well worth the price.
Yup - nail heads can be a pain. I have been setting all the nails I can find and plan to use a magnet to try and find the others.
I did hit two nails and didn't even know it till it was over.
I spoke to some contractors about the nails. They said hitting nails will cause the blades to wear out faster but unless you are hitting lots of them, consistently, it should be too big a deal.
I hear you about the boards needing to be as flat as possible. One guy said that if you use it on wood with a grain pattern it (the pattern) will go bye-bye.
Still, it is by far faster than any of the other methods we've tried. Unfortunately we won't be able to use it on the molded trim or fish-scales.
Cool tool.
I wish I could find something to take paint off of the cedar shingles that would do it that fast.
Removing the paint on the bottom will really give your new paint job a nice crisp look.
Are you making any predictions on how long it will take to remove the paint from the entire house?
I'm pretty sure if we tried setting these nails, the pointy end would come out through the interior wall. I think if the PO had been able to get his hands on railroad spikes, he'd have used those instead.
And yeah, re the trim. That's our problem with all the stripping tools: everything we'll need to strip is what Mr. Yapp called "the whoop-ti-do's": a warptastic beadboard porch ceiling, soffits, bungalow columns, etc. It remains to be seen what the shake shingles in the gables look like paintwise (and condition-wise; it will not surprise me to see some damaged or missing when we get this siding off).
At least there's no gingerbread.
Jan -
Not sure how long it will take to scrape it. I'm hoping to have a good idea later today.
Depending on how your shingle siding is this tool can be used on them. I know some of the videos show it being used on shingles. I've also been reading about contractors being used on it.
Karen - sounds like you guys have your hands full!!
I LOVE my Paint Shaver Pro! While it is not perfect, I have not found anything that can remove paint off the side of our house better - and I did try plenty of other methods.
The nail heads have been our worst problem. We tried to pull out most of what we could, but there is always still an occasional one that we miss. I haven't seen any significant issue with the blades. Sometimes we have to replace a board here or there because the nail gets caught and tears up the board. But I can live with an occasional board replacement.
Love it, love it, love it! You will be happy you spent the money!
Which versions have you guys used. I'm on the fence between the 6amp and the 8amp.
If you use the 6amp, do you feel you have enough power (especially going over nails)?
If you use the 8amp version, how is the arm fatigue, especally on ladders?
Great info guys. Tx.
TIA -RM
We are using the 6 amp version and it has plenty of power, even over nail heads.
As for fatigue, there is very little. The hardest part for my is using it over my head with the soffits for extended periods.
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