How do I get paint off Jarrah

[Whit68]

G'day,

The good: I got some nice lengths of Jarrah (150mm x 40mm), grabbed from a demolition site.

The really good: It was free!!!

The bad: It is covered in white paint. From the age of the demolition it is probably lead based.

The really bad: I don't have a thicknesser or jointer.

So how do I get the paint off without trashing the timber?

thanks
Anthony

[Burnsy]

1. Electric planer with disposable tungsten knives
2. Big belt sander with very coarse paper - they used a floor sander to do the massive jarrah beams they pulled out of the old Bunnings site in Kewdale and these are now adorning the Nookenbar hotel redevelopment.

[DJ’s Timber]

Paint stripper

[SAISAY]

With paint stripper you won't get lead particles floating around in the air, then a final sanding should make it look good.
Wolffie

[BobL]

With paint stripper you won't get lead particles floating around in the air, then a final sanding should make it look good.
Wolffie

[Christopha]

I would never put painted timber through my thicknesser or over my buzzer as the paint is about as kind to high speed steel as a grinder! The sanders are a good idea as is the stripper, what I have done is run the timber through the saw bench just taking a light skim off of the painted surfaces. That way you have a fresh face and no residues of grit...

[Wongo]

I would never put painted timber through my thicknesser or over my buzzer as the paint is about as kind to high speed steel as a grinder! The sanders are a good idea as is the stripper, what I have done is run the timber through the saw bench just taking a light skim off of the painted surfaces. That way you have a fresh face and no residues of grit...

[LIST=1][*]Electric planer with disposable tungsten knives

Chris is right and paint stripper is messy. That’s why Burnsy’s suggest is perfect.

[orraloon]

I have used all the above methods and the electric plane is by far the best. To replace the blades after will cost less than a few sanding belts. That is if they need replacing at all. Just get a good mask for the dust.

Regards
John

[Whit68]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Looks like the electric plane and a mask is the go.
regards
Anthony

[BobL]

planer, saw, sander all will make fine lead dust, lots of it that you cannot see. Unless the filter on the mask is 0.3 microns it won't do gip. Then no matter how good your mask is it will settle all over your workplace for you to fluff up and breathe for days/weeks to come unless you use a sub 1-micron DC that also traps the fine dust.

Paint stripper is messy but it doesn't spray it around like a nappyless child.

[Burnsy]

planer, saw, sander all will make fine lead dust, lots of it that you cannot see. Unless the filter on the mask is 0.3 microns it won't do gip. Then no matter how good your mask is it will settle all over your workplace for you to fluff up and breathe for days/weeks to cone unless you use a sub 1-micron DC that also traps the fine dust.

Paint stripper is messy but it doesn't spray it around like a nappyless child.

Not meaning to hijack the thread but I think this is a fine time to pose a few more questions. How much lead is actually in old paint? How much dust would you actually have to breath in as an adult to be affected? How long would it take your body to get rid of this said lead if you did not do it again for a while?

Keen to know for interest sake as many people work in lead mines and other industries/towns where they are sujected to lead and from what I have heard it requires continued long term exposure to small amounts to have an effect - less on children of course.

Don't read this as me saying that it is not important or being a safety cowboy, I am genuinely interested in what the actual risk is. We all know that wil asbestos it only takes one fibre but lead has a LD50.

[BobL]

Start here; http://www.environment.gov.au/atmosp.../leadpaint.pdf

The thing with lead is, every little bit we inject into the open environment compromises our physical and our mental health. Maybe it's like dust, I worked with it for so many years and read so much about it I'm a touch paranoid about it.

[Burnsy]

Thanks Bob, I will have a read.

[Whit68]

OK - I went down the paint stripper route and it has got the top coats of paint off but......

It seems that the stripper wont touch the undercoat, has anyone tried burning off paint?

regards
Anthony

[SAISAY]

we used a heat gun and a 2" spatula. After that we used the Bosch sander with 40 grit white paint removing sanding sheets, when we were down to bare wood we shaved just a whisker off the boards.
I won't swear to it but from memory most undercoats were oil based.
Wolffie