Easy OFF

[bandit1]

what is the way you folks would use the stuff?....maybe someone can do a demo on a scrap body or something?

[SuperStockAndy]

You strip paint with it, just spray it on the body. Pretty easy, really.

[bandit1]

so i just spray it on the body....and let the paint fall off? .....or is there a method to the madness?

[jcbigpaw]

I use easy off to strip my models and prefer it. I place the parts to be stripped on some newspaper or cardboard outside. Spray a good coat of easy off onto parts and leave to do its work. Later I'll scrub parts with an old tooth brush under warm water. It will remove paint, chrome, old glued joints and even body filler.

[SuperStockAndy]

so i just spray it on the body....and let the paint fall off? .....or is there a method to the madness?

Pretty much, with the occasional scrubbing with a toothbrush.

[Erik Smith]

Easy Off is kind of nasty - for some reason the fumes will make you cough. Not sure why, but it doesn't seem like a good thing. So I would spray outside or in a place where you don't have to breathe the fumes. I like to put my parts in a suitably sized plastic container (with lid) then spray the Easy Off over the parts and close the lid. Depending on the material being stripped, I wait a few minutes or hours, then, using gloves, I take the parts to the sink and run water over them. If you are doing small parts, use a strainer or they will go down the drain and disappear. After rinsing, I wash with warm water and soap and scrub with a potato brush or toe nail brush (the kind you use to wash baby's feet) as they are a little stiffer than a toothbrush.

Easy Off will strip chrome very quickly, including the shiny undercoat. It will eat some paints rapidly, others after some soaking, and some it doesn't do anything.

[Erik Smith]

To be honest, I've never looked for it like that. My current aerosol can is about empty, so I will take a look. Is it the same formula?

[cobraman]

I use the yellow spray can. The blue can stuff does not work as well or at all really.

[Art Anderson]

As for the active ingredient in Easy-Off, yellow label: It's Sodium Hydroxide, which chemical your grandmother knew as "Lye". Lye is a base, highly caustic, which is why it strips enamels, some lacquers, and of course the micro-thin aluminum we know as vacuum-plated "chrome" model car parts.

Lye will "burn" your skin, and is even more unkind to mucous mebranes, which means your nose, mouth and throat--which is why the overspray fumes (even the fumes given off from dissolved crystals of lye (Lewis Red Devel Lye), so adequate ventilation and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is a very good idea.

Personally, I use Nitrile examination gloves (those blue or purple "rubber" gloves that EMT's and police officers use when investigating, or treating victims at accident or crime scenes. Nitrile gloves are non-allergenic (many people have an allergy to latex rubber), powder free. While the $16 for a box of 100 gloves at Walgreen's might seem expensive, that comes out 32-cents per pair, not a bad deal at all (some sources may have them cheaper). A simple dust filter covering my mouth and nose seems to capture any of the overspray droplets for me.

Some modelers use chlorine bleach for cleaning and stripping, so a word of extremely important caution hereth Never, NEVER mix anything containing Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) with household (chlorine bleach!!! Doing so will release chlorine gas into the air, and chlorine is a deadly poisonous gas (used as such as a WMD during WW-I, BTW). It can damage lung tissue, and breathing the stuff is often fatal--so if you have both chemicals in your lexicon, make absolutely certain you keep them very separated, please!

All that said, I simply use yellow-label Easy-Off (or a generic brand of the stuff) by putting the parts to be stripped in a glass bowl, then spraying a generous amount of the oven cleaner into the bowl, enough to more than cover all the parts being stripped, and let that stand for 10-15 minutes, after which the chrome, and the paint (if it is at all stripable with sodium hydroxide) will have disappearned. Been doing it for roughly 50 years, so I know it works.

Art

[Jdurg]

Some modelers use chlorine bleach for cleaning and stripping, so a word of extremely important caution hereth Never, NEVER mix anything containing Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) with household (chlorine bleach!!! Doing so will release chlorine gas into the air, and chlorine is a deadly poisonous gas (used as such as a WMD during WW-I, BTW). It can damage lung tissue, and breathing the stuff is often fatal--so if you have both chemicals in your lexicon, make absolutely certain you keep them very separated, please!

I have to clarify the statement you made here Art. It's not exactly correct. Chlorine bleach is a solution of sodium hypochlorite in water. Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is the sodium salt of hypochlorus acid (HOCl). Hypochlorus acid forms when chlorine gas is dissolved in water via the reaction Cl2(g) + H2O(l) => HOCl(aq) + HCl(aq). Hypochlorus acid does not exist on its own. To make the bleach that we know of, the chlorine gas is dissolved in a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) so that as soon as the hypochlorus acid forms, it is neutralized by the sodium hydroxide to form sodium hypochlorite and water.

If you have a basic solution, the equilibrium of the reaction stays on the right side causing the OCl- ions to remain in solution. If you acidify the solution, then the equilibrium shifts to the left and you wind up getting the generation of chlorine gas. Therefore, NEVER under ANY circumstances mix an acidic item with bleach.

Bases are generally safer to mix with bleach, but to be honest, you really shouldn't mix anything with bleach. While most bases are safe to mix with bleach, there is one common household base that is very dangerous, and that's ammonia. Ammonia (NH3) mixed with bleach causes the formation of chloramine gas (NH2Cl) which is very toxic. Other nasty byproducts can form such as hydrazine and other chlorine based gases.

Now you are correct in that chlorine gas is a nasty halogen that was used as a chemical weapon in WWI. The human body has evolved to sense small amounts of Cl2 well before it reaches a dangerous level. In fact, when you get a whiff of bleach you are indeed smelling chlorine gas as part of the natural equilibrium of the reaction in which NaOCl was formed.

As someone with a degree in forensic chemistry, I just had to step in and correct the chemistry error in your statement.