Can anyone recomend a good stipping compound for removing a polyurethane finish. Thanks in advance for your sage advice.

Jasco Paint and Epoxy Remover

A piece of glass works well also, just use a small piece as a scraper.

Take a paint remover for two component paints.
Polyurethane finishes can be quite resistant.
Very often you need two or more applications to get the finish off. Be sure that all the finish is removed if you want to apply a hand rubbed oil finish, because remaining finish will show as bright shiny parts when the oilfinish is completed!


Use a sharp knife or a piece of glass

Try a gel type pain stripper usually available from good hardware stores, apply with a brush watching for splashes in one's eyes.

Once the surface starts to crack and lift remove the degraded varnish with steel wool. Be careful not to overload gel onto the cheqeuring, use a small toothbrush to remove the gel from here.

Onc steel wool has removed the degraded gel, use a finer grade steel wool to smooth off the wood, then use a damp cloth on the wood to "whisker" the grain, this will cause small whiskers to rise which again should be steel wooled off, once the stock is dry and smoothed off, you can start to re-apply the chosen finish.

The process sounds a little tedious, but with care can result in a nice looking stock, especially if an oil finish is subsequently applied. Good luck

Thanks for the help folks!

If you don't like using paint stripper which I don't, as suggested above scrapping works well. The back side of a hacksaw blade works, a blade from a plane works well also, it you use the plane blade you don't want it sharp. Any piece of thin steel with a blunt edge will work. Tape up your checkering first.

I'd suggest Citri strip. You can buy it at Walmart for about 8 bucks. Put on a thick coat and wrap the stock in aluminum foil for about 30 mins ( the wrap is supposed to help the stuff work). then brush it with a stiff nylon bush and clean up with mineral spirits. Ihis stuff will even work on the remington and browning finishes. Let us know how it comes out.

Weagle

IMHO, chemical stripping is preferable to scraping a finish off. Unless you are extremely careful and talented with your tools you can end up altering the demensions/contours of the wood under the finish, and since scrapers are flat you can end up with ridges that will then have to be removed and blended in.

Another vote for JASCO; but don't get it on you as it burns!

quote:

Another vote for JASCO; but don't get it on you as it burns

Why I don't like chemical strippers, and wearing rubber gloves bugs me also. I will just be careful with a scrapper.