Stripping off the paint

Unfortunately it seems like stripping the paint off the bike will be a long process. The main reason for that is that the paint stripper available in Sweden is about as powerful as vinegar.

I tried to convince my parents to post me over some Nitromors, which will pretty much take the skin off your hands in a few minutes if you're unfortunate enough to get some there.

I broke the bike down tonight and did a little test with some locally available paint stripper. The instructions sound ok, and it says the pain should be removable after about 15 minutes.

15 minutes go by....

Then another...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

After an hour some of the top clear coat actually started to blister, but the blue colour underneath remained.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2 hours passed and at last most of the clear coat from the test section was gone.

I applied a second try and left for another hour to see if the blue paint would start to blister.

No such luck... So I took the frame into the shower to remove the residue and gave it a scrubbing with some wire wool. And much to my surprise some aluminium was getting exposed.

Hurrah... 3 hours to remove about a hand sized patch of paint.

This is going to be a slow process...