I know this one. Oil enamel paints: I do this for a regular living. You do NOT use the spray stripper as it will drift and get on about anything...cars, dogs, plants or yourself. It is bad mojo to breathe. Use stripper. Use good stripper...Bix or better...NO ORANGE SMELLING STUFF!!! it causes your skin to react to being completely black for weeks and I mean BLACK.....
You paint it on with a china bristle brush, holding the plastic pail beneath and pull your strokes upward. One pass only. Cover an area of 5x5 or so and recoat, putting it on heavily. It drips and runs, so some clear tape at the bottom is useful, but with care not necessary, once you get the hang. After it sets a few minutes out of the sun, take your razor blade in a good holder and push up from the bottom, holding your finger over the end a bit to let the stuff ball up or roll up on the end of the blade, between your finger and the blade. Naturally, use gloves. I use simple cotton jersey gloves as they are cheap and work well enough to keep the stuff off and still be flexible. After one stroke up, drop the scrapings into another plastic tub. Keep it out of your eyes and do not wipe your brow if sweaty with the back of your glove. Get a paper towel and put it in your pocket for that.
You get this going and keep turning the blade over and over to strop it sharp. One blade can do 50 sq foot or so. Use a good 'old style' metal razor blade holder they still sell at Wal-mart.
With practice, you get to the point very quickly where you can almost do it and not have to clean the glass afterwards, with no mess and nothing harmed. It takes some practice, but it is very possible.
I find the bigger blade scrapers are not as sharp and actually harder to deal with. One windopw cleaner guy told me he actually carried a whet stone with him and sharpened his blades as he went??? They are four inches wide and you can get a fairy hefty holder for them, but I never tried whet stoning the blades.
The aluminum metal strips between the window panels are usually anodized and do not react to stripper. The painted ones do, sometimes and you have to be careful on them. If they look painted, they probably are. If they are factory smooth and kinda dull, they are probably anodized. Scrath one to tell. The rubber weatherstrip also is sentitive to stripper and I find it easier to simply cheat and 'repaint' it with black poster, if coated with old paint.
I buy mineral spirits in the plastic gallon jugs (for 1.99 at KMart) and cut them to become wonderful stripper pails. The gloves are on sale at KMart for 57c a pair sometimes and I usually load up a few dozen once a year. Sometimes check the chain drug stores or truck-stop super stores as they sometimes have jersey glove blow outs.
When done, I wetsponge down the window with bon-ami and water and rinse again and squeegie. The windows are then very clean. Take a paper towel and wipe down the lower mullion and you are done. You might even run the razor obliquely across the lower mullion carefully to pop off any old drips or stripper build-up.
I throw the stripper scrapings into a bigger tub in the back of my truck and leave it there for several weeks to dry out, then dispose of it like any dry paint into the trash.
Now, I paint windows everyday for a living. How many windows do I clean or strip? Very few! I almost always sub it out to readily available window cleaners who charge $5-10 a panel to remove and clean. I let the customer deal with them to limit my liability of the window cleaner, in case they run a ladder thru somewhere. I get stuck having to clean one every now and then. I go thru less than a gallon of stripper a year, so that tells you how little I do it. One last point, if you do get any stripper on sensitive skin, wash it off immediately with a damp rag as water does neutralize it real fast.
My advice: Sub it out to a commercial window cleaner!
Two other things: Tell customers "Paint Stripper" and they almost always buy "Mineral Thinner or Spirits" for some reason and sometimes you see people try cleaning their windows with sand paper!
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Preston McCall
2516 W 63rd St.
Mission Hills, Kansas
66208
913-262-3443 office
816-289-7112 cell
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