Many years ago, we hired a yard to sandblast about 15 years of bottom paint.
The resultant texture was a fine-grained sandstone. The first coat of paint
filled it.
Thereafter, we sanded clean each year and ultimately switched to ablative
paint.
I'd suppose that there are less hostile blasting methods (walnut hulls,
soda?) and that a LOT depends on the care of the operator.
Were I to do it again, i'd instruct the operator to try for a 90% complete
job and i'd sand the rest.

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"Ryk" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:50:23 GMT, in message

"Dennis Pogson" wrote:

Most professionals use a heavy scraper if the paint is really hard and
brittle. It's a tiring job, but can be quicker than applying softener, as
the paint flakes away in large chunks.

And be sure to get a scraper with a carbide blade. They out-perform
steel by a mile, especially if you don't an easy way to keep
resharpening the steel.

I used

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...90,43040,43041

but it is still a big job...

Ryk

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