Tips on stripping and repainting a Mills bandit?

[pedroofn19]

I have recently bought a Mills Hi Top Blue Bell, and it really needs repainting. It looks like someone has had a go at stripping off the old paint, but gave up at some point. What would be the best way of removing the rest of the old paint? Rubbing it down, paint stripper, or is there another way to do it?
Once the paint is removed I was thinking of taking the case to a car paint shop, for a professional paint job. Would that be the best way?

hi top Blue.PNG (211.63 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

Any tips or advice would be very much appreciated.
Thank you

[treefrog]

Hi there, I saw that machine at the Elephant. One of the challenges removing old paint from these machines, apart from the layers and toxic lead based content, is that the older base paints are incredibly hard to shift with stripper and it often takes a number of goes to get off. I have done it, but a pain and you have to be careful using any tools on the metalwork as it's a soft alloy. See below thread on stripper experiences...

New Colron wood dye and Nitromors formulas

In terms of painting, I have had success using only light preparation so non-full strip and using wrinkle paint which covers minor blemishes. It's tricky to use as it needs to be applied in warm conditions. The machine below I had done with this using VHT paint.


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If stripping to metal filler, a primer needs to be used with a number of coats to create a good base before the top coats and, yes, obviously a paint shop will do a lot better than a novice.

[pedroofn19]

Ok mate, thanks for the advice. The bandit you restored looks very nice, well done. With any luck my one will look as good.