In my younger days, I worked in a body shop during summer vacation.
As is common in life, young guys get the fun jobs that toughens you up. Big grin.
I was given safety glasses with glass lenses, long sleeve jacket, long rubber gloves, water hose,
sponge, putty knife, horse hair paint brush, stainless steel bowl, steel brush and a rake.
We used the commercial type Klean-Strip.
I worked outdoors under a shade tree.
Get this stuff on your skin and you can't get to the water hose quick enough. It burns.
Try you best not to get to close to breath-in the fumes (it's like ammonia).
Old cars typically had 4-5 layers of paint.
Brush on the Klean-Strip, in an area like half a door, and the paint immediately bubbles.
What a minute and scrape. It usually got down through the third layer.
It will begin eating through Bondo (body filler).
Usually the scrapings and stripper come off together with a putty knife.
Rake the scrapings up off the ground so that you don't step in it.
Brush on the second application and wait a couple of minutes then scrape.
You are down to the metal except in hard to get to places hence the need for the steel brush.
You have to wash the metal thoroughly with water and a sponge to clean off the stripper.
Klean-Strip is/was so strong it would eat through the can in a couple of years.
It turned plastic into jelly, corrodes aluminum and reacts with fiberglass.
On badly rusty metal, you either grind or sand it off if it doesn't thin the metal too much.
For pitted metal that is too deep to grind, commercial acid was used on the strength of muratic acid.
Another foul chemical to deal with.
I decided I didn't want to be a bodyman when I graduated from high school.
