hello, would burning off paint (spray paint) and stickers from a steel unicycle frame with a butane torch weaken it at all?
Re: burning off paint?
no, but the fumes will provably kill ya.
you will just make a sticky mess and burn your fingers in the process of trying to scrape the paint off.
use the torch to soften up the stickers and scrape them off.
Then go out and get a spray can of paint stripper, spray it on, let it set outside in the shade for about a half an hour and the paint will scrape off down to bare metal with a pocket knife.
Yeah, paint striper woks greak, powder coat or spray paint, they both come off. I dunno if a troch would work, i do know when i cut my neeck down it heated up so much like the 1" down from the neck all the paint flaked off.
Re: burning off paint?
Be careful, it could end up looking like this.
Re: Re: burning off paint?
[gulp]
I’ll try some paint thinner, thanks everyone!
Re: Re: Re: burning off paint?
Paint STRIPPER, big diffrence. Oh and dot get it on your hands…it hurts…alot.
Re: Re: Re: Re: burning off paint?
thanks for the tip, sounds like it comes from personal experience 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: burning off paint?
looks at remains of hand…Yes it does.
luckily my hands are so coated in anti-seize the paint stripper would not corrode at all!
Maybe the paint stripper and anti-seize will mix and catch fire.
Would that fire be of an acceptable heat in order to a) burn off the paint from the frame, and b) be cool enough not to damage the frame itself?
if its a steet frame, youl have to get it really really hot to screw it up. as long as you dont heat enough to bend under gravity, it will just cool down and reain its same strength and shape.
i guess it’s safe to assume that the paint will flake off, or at least come off some how before the frame becomes damaged.
Thanks
It’s a Coker frame…now to choose a completely undone colour…
Lime green.
This is wrong, you can alter the strength and toughness of the steel without heating it this much, but not by giving it a quick pass with a blow torch to strip the paint. I think that this method would result in a lot of sticky burnt paint, just use paint stripper and a paint scrapper.
bah, iv goten stuff red hot in a forge and it seemed damn well as strong as it was before.
It seemed as strong? Did you test the piece to destruction under carefully controlled conditions and assess the true stress/strain curve to ascertain the Ultmiate tensile strengh? Did you consider that the way in which the material is cooled is extremley important in controlling the way in which its properties change? You can’t just guess these things.
It seemed as strong, you say? Well you’ve convinced me.
pft.
Paint burn-off is usually done on fixtures and hooks that are used in powder coating, etc where they don’t care about affecting the tensile strength. It is also done in an oven where the temperature can be controlled very closely.
Stripping is the answer.
Most powder coats are cured at about 360°F (If I remember correctly). You would have to get over 450 or so to do some real damage. Some tempering is done starting at 600°F. This doesn’t leave much of a range to hit to “burn-off”.