Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - Stripping with a dip tank?

I am living out in Spain at the moment where there is lots of old wooden mostly pine antique furnature. Unfortunately most of it seems to have been painted in a horrible thick brown paint. We have found that using coastic soda from the local super market in an old bath tub works very well but this is very time time consuming as the bath is usually kept only a few centimetres deep for saftey and I have to use a sponge or scotchbrite to wipe of the old paint.
Can any one tell me the best tank size and stripping liquid I could use so that I could just put an old chair straight into the tank and pull it out later paint less. Also, what can I do with the waste liquids as I certainly don't want to start polluting the local water supplies!

Many thanks,
Sam

Sam:

The caustic soda you're using (lye) is about as powerful as a stripper gets. Around the turn of the century it was a common method for stripping in the states, except the liquid was usually in a large vat, and heated. The furniture was placed in a wire cage and lowered into the vat. The purpose of the cage was to keep all the pieces readily accessible because the "stripper" invariably dissolved the glue and items like chairs literally fell apart.

All of the commercial systems I'm familiar with (see the "Flow Over stripping" article in this forum) still require some hand cleaning after stripping - there just ain't no easy way...

For other readers information: The caustic soda mentioned here is the active ingredient in powder drain cleaners as "Drano". 'Farm use' lye is basically the same thing.

If any of the participants here have another answer, feel free to jump right in.

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George T.


[This message has been edited by George (edited February 04, 2000).]