Sorry no pictures, just looking for input on returning an aluminum airplane to it's birthday suit.

I have done this recently, went from three paint jobs to original polished and paint scheme. Use an expensive modern stripper correctly and it will be cheaper than using the cheap strippers. Bringing back the polish is time consuming but fine if you are familiar with basic polishing techniques. Feel free to dm me with questions

PS-3010 from Aeroclean Technologies is what we’ve found works best in my airplane paint shop.

Much better and safer to work with than the nasty stuff of the past.

Works better if you spray it on vs brush, and it’s very temperature sensitive. 70-80 degrees F ideally. The colder the hangar is, the worse it works.

I have an airless spraying system from a drum, but I have heard a wagner power painter works.

I’d also first check if you have Lacquer paint by rubbing Lacquer thinner on it. Lacquer sucks to strip/melt off. It’s just a mess.

All great intel, thanks. It's not so much the effort but the concern that once I've peeled back the layer discovering the surface below is unsuitable for restoring to a polished finish. I'm expecting to revel areas of concern, corrosion etc. and part of this is in an effort to address them. I guess if it's determined to be impossible to polish up the surface I'll just do the necessary repairs and return to a painted surface.

Stripped my '61 172B back to a polished surface two years ago...

Multiple layers of paint on different parts of the plane, all of them different compositions needing different types of stripper - including a layer that was lacquer that almost did me in. I started out laying on the stripper with a brush and quickly ditched that for an airless sprayer that was a huge leap forward.

I did encounter a few spots that didn't lend themselves to polishing, so I painted a stripe over that section as well as painting the control surfaces. Still polishing and trying to perfect the look, but it's already good enough that Sault, Quebec and Sudbury ground have given me specific taxi directions so they could get a closer look from the tower. (scared me the first time, I thought I was in some sort of trouble)

I'm based at CYOO if you want to look / get more info, I also have a YouTube channel where I logged the process.

CanucksUnlimited wrote:Stripped my '61 172B back to a polished surface two years ago...

Multiple layers of paint on different parts of the plane, all of them different compositions needing different types of stripper - including a layer that was lacquer that almost did me in. I started out laying on the stripper with a brush and quickly ditched that for an airless sprayer that was a huge leap forward.

I did encounter a few spots that didn't lend themselves to polishing, so I painted a stripe over that section as well as painting the control surfaces. Still polishing and trying to perfect the look, but it's already good enough that Sault, Quebec and Sudbury ground have given me specific taxi directions so they could get a closer look from the tower. (scared me the first time, I thought I was in some sort of trouble)

I'm based at CYOO if you want to look / get more info, I also have a YouTube channel where I logged the process.

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