Mom said "don't grind your teeth"...

After seeing that I was getting nowhere fast with the stripping, I tried using the oscillating sander on half of the back end.  After a relatively long time wearing out sandpaper on half of it, I had limited results.  That's when I realized that I'd be working on this project most weekends this summer and maybe getting it in the water before the end of the season...

So that's when I went to Home Depot to look for a power tool that might speed up progress. The Tool Guy there set me up with a grinder with a sanding attachment.

GRINDERS EAT WOOD!

On the left is what the chemical stripper did on the front of the hull.  It pretty much didn't even bubble the rock-hard green paint.  Now on the right, here's just a couple of minutes with the grinder on the same spot.  Right down to the wood - no questions asked!  Yippie! The back side section was down to bare wood in a comparatively short period of time. And the entire back end had the same result.

There's a cautionary tale here -

 the grinder isn't something you want to take after your grandma's old furniture!!! 

It does some serious finish and wood removal pretty fast.  It's going to take the finish off the outside of the boat in a big hurry, and polish the metal fasteners along with it.  When you hit the nails, sparks are flying!  It takes awhile to get the touch so you don't end up with big circular gouges.

Mom always said "Don't grind your teeth."  Moms know best.

Start stripping!!!

I found some pretty good tips online on what to do and not do for this weekend.  Sounds like do not plan on scraping and sanding unless you have way too much time and energy (that's not me).  Last fall I took the powerwasher and blew off most of the loose stuff (a lot of the white paint came off the inside quite easily).  Husky makes a pretty good unit for about 100 bucks that you can have all sorts of fun with on your house, car, sidewalk, and your dog.  Just be careful not to use the most powerful stream on anything soft or light plastic (like the rain pants I had on).  See how to strip a boat before painting it from SailingAhead.com.  Another good one on getting a smooth (boat) bottom is "Sand, Blast, or Strip Your Way to a Smooth Bottom" at the Cruising World website.

Depending on how many layers of paint you might have would seem to indicate the type of chemical stripper you want to use.  The label may or may not be a good indicator of what to expect, but there are some that claim to be able to take off as many as 10 layers like Peel Away® at about $50 a gallon.

I'll probably go to Home Depot or Fleet (cool man stores) and pick out a medium priced product with a cool name.  It looks like the inside floor didn't have any kind of super duper paint on it, since the washer took a lot of it off pretty easily.  The varnish on the natural wood maybe a bit tougher to get off.

Anyway, I'll report back soon on the results and some pictures - stripping pictures...  Just remember, strippers get undressed for work!  (you knew something like that was coming, didn't you?)