Comments on: Dealmonger: Porter Cable Abrasive Paint Remover $202

By: Cuda

Cuda — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:53:46 +0000

The porter cable tungston sander/grinder is a great tool for removing many layers of paint period that is it’s job it does not feather well it is not a finish sander. To use it right you need to adjust the pad at the top to just contact the surface, if you set the right side as contact only sand to the right if you make the left side the contact only sand to the left. going back and forth will grind in or gum up the discs. You can adjust for a deeper cut but that may gum of the discs to fast you have to experiment on the types of paint on the surface.
When they do fill up you slap one in thinner and start using another repeating over and over till they where out from nails etc. Look at the guide bars they are beveled at the top for a reason. Then there are bolts at the top to adjust if needed to ride of the top board when going lower for another swipe.

By: mhig9000

mhig9000 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:29:01 +0000

I used one of these when my father was repainting his house about 5 years ago, it was very finicky to set up, but once you get the depth adjustment just right its works better and faster than anything I ever used. The disks aren’t generally prone to clogging, but if you don’t have it adjusted so it gets all the way to bare wood in one pass it seems to clog often.

And yes the 9.5 lbs is a bear if youre using it over your head, however the fact that it only requires 1-2 passes max per board if you have it adjusted right means its much faster than any other method I’ve used (though i havent used the paint shaver).

I did see a guy using a paint shaver on an old house in Maine a couple years back and he had almost the entire place down to bare wood, I imagine that would mean it is better than the PC.

By: PutnamEco

PutnamEco — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:11:12 +0000

Thanks all, for the replies. I think I’ll pass on this stripper.

Have you all tried Nortons RapidStrip discs in your angle grinders? I like them for small stripping jobs, I always carry a few in my grinders case.
http://www.nortonconsumer.com/Data/Element/Node/ProductLine/product_line_edit.asp?ele_ch_id=L0000000000000002593

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:41:46 +0000

I dealt with this problem on my house, which had everything from badly peeling paint to mulltiple layers still firmly adhered over clear cedar 3/4 x 10 inch bevel siding. What I ended up with was the Paintshaver, which took off 90 per cent of the paint, followed by carbide scrapers in the cormers and a Makita GV5000 5″ high speed flexible disc sander, with a tungsten carbide steel abrasive disk (made for the Porter Cable 7403) mounted. This got rid of any remaining paint and when it clogged a couple of swipes with a gum rubber belt cleaner got it back to functioning. After this, I hit it once more with the Makita with sandpaper to smooth things out a little. At this point, the paint was gone and sandpaper was safe to use.

On the rest of the house, I’m going to use the same setup with one modification. I’m going to take off every bit of vertical trim that I can, so I won’t have to handscrpe all of those corners.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:27:35 +0000

Amazon must have run out at the $202 price - your link gets you to an Amazon affiliate that quotes $308 plus shipping

By: fred

fred — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:17:54 +0000

Re PutnamEco Says:

I haven’t tried the Porter Cable. What advantage does it have over a disc grinder with a sanding disc?
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The 2 that we bought had some control over the depth that the disc can cut into the siding. That would seem like a nice feature - but we found that the disc themselves were not very effective in removing the built-up paint (or maybe our technique was bad - even though we tried varying it) - so all we got was the friction of the pad heating up the paint resulting in a gummy mess. My lead carpenter - said let me try this out - because he was a real fan of our PC sanders - and he could not believe that they produced this tool.

We went back to heat and scraping.

By: PutnamEco

PutnamEco — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:33:38 +0000

Re:
Gough Says:
…and the PaintShaver, almost never.
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I would be interested to hear of what shortcomings the Paintshaver has.
I’ve had pretty good luck with the Paintshaver. Which is both fairly light and has pretty good dust collection. I haven’t tried the Porter Cable. What advantage does it have over a disc grinder with a sanding disc?

Note:
I don’t strip paint often, as I prefer to leave that kind of stuff to the painting pros. But I’m always looking for tools to make the job quicker/easier.

By: Gough

Gough — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:17:39 +0000

We run two of these in addition to a Metabo and a first generation PaintShaver. The Porter-Cables we use on several projects a year, the Metabo rarely, and the PaintShaver, almost never. They do have their uses, but with thick layers of paint, we often fall back on heat plates/heat guns and scrapers. We end up using the Porter-Cables when we have to strip paint from a deck, or if we’re only dealing with paint that’s failed along the lower portions of a bunch of clapboards.
We did strip varnish from all of the soffit of one large house with them. You really do notice that 9 1/2 pounds when you’re using it overhead!

One big downside is that there’s no dust collection.

By: fred

fred — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:49:54 +0000

We bought a couple of these years ago for a siding rennovation job. They were worthless. Maybe it was the layers of paint - but the tool quickly turned everything into a gummy mess. We ended up using heat and scrapers.

I hear that the Metabo tool is not much better and has other issues - but that the Paint Shaver is a better product - but I have no hands-on experience.

By: Frank Townend

Frank Townend — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:05:15 +0000

No wonder painters have massive biceps; 9 1/2 pounds.