Remove paint with accelerator oil

Are you struggling with removing dry, old acrylic paint or another kind of stubborn paint? We get the frustration! Even though Speedheater’s IR Technology already helps a whole lot, with this trick you can cut down your working time by almost half.

The Speedheater Accelerator Oil is a highly refined linseed oil with extreme penetration capabilities, softening the paint and enabling Speedheater’s infrared beams to lift the paint from the substrate more effectively. With the help of this step, paint removal becomes both more time efficient and less work intensive in the scraping phase. Friendly towards you as the user, the substrate, and the environment.

Apply the accelerator oil

Brush or spray the accelerator oil on the surface where you want to remove paint. The old layers of paint will be rehumidified by the application of the oil and prepared for heating and scraping.

Allow to work at least 24 hours

Let the oil penetrate the paint and wait for at least 24 hours; for best results, it’s preferable to wait even longer. You can wait for up to a whole month, and the longer the oil has to work, the better the end result will be.

Heat up the surface with Speedheater

Hold the IR lamp over the area where you want to remove paint. Set the lamp aside once you see the paint beginning to soften and bubble. The IR radiation is now penetrating all paint layers all the way to the substrate. The heat is high enough to soften the paint, but not high enough to release toxins from the paint or burn wood surfaces.

Simply scrape the paint off

The soft paint is now easy to scrape off without applying too much pressure, meaning that the scraper won’t scratch or damage the substrate.

Repaint right away

Since this method of paint removal doesn’t require solvents and the substrate is left dry and clean after scraping, no waiting time is needed before repainting.

Why do you need to remove old paint before applying new paint?

While you can, in practice, just keep painting over old paint layers, the result won’t look particularly good and, above all, the paint’s durability will suffer noticeably. This is because old paint tends to crack and flake off. Which means that you’ll have to repaint after a relatively short time. So in the long run, you’ll save time by doing it right from the get go, and your results will be much better to boot.

With Speedheater’s infrared beams penetrating all paint layers and allowing you to easily scrape off both varnish and paint, you get to apply paint on a clean wood surface and enjoy a good-looking, durable end result.

The difference between accelerator oil and paint remover

Does this sound like too many steps for removing paint, and are you maybe thinking whether it wouldn’t be easier to just apply a layer of paint remover and then get scraping? Paint remover works just fine on smaller surfaces and when you only want to remove the topmost layer of paint. Chemical paint remover rarely penetrates more than one paint layer and therefore necessitates much more work if you want to get down to a clean wood surface before repainting. Older chemical paint removers also used to be highly toxic; nowadays they are mostly biodegradable—but do look closely.

Accelerator oil, however, only contains solvent-free linseed oil in refined form, an environmentally friendly method of paint removal. Another big difference is that the oil penetrates all the layers of paint and removes them from the substrate with the help of the IR radiation, meaning that you get rid of all old paint layers in one swoop. So even if it sounds like more steps on paper, accelerator oil combined with infrared heating is a method that can save you both time and energy.

Tips for removing paint with accelerator oil

• Plan ahead! So that the accelerator oil will have at least 24 hours to work.
• Use accelerator oil as an impregnating agent if the wood is dry after scraping or if you want the surface to be pure wood. In that case, add a layer of oil after scraping, heat up the surface with a Speedheater, and sand in the oil with steel wool.
• Once you’ve wiped away any excess oil with a cloth, place it underwater or in a flame-resistant container.
• Use a tarp or equivalent to capture the paint removed to make cleaning and recycling easy.