Recently I stripped an AR upper and lower back down to the black anodized finish after I got tired of the beat up Duracoat finish I'd sprayed on years ago. I know Duracoat isn't as popular as it once was but I thought I'd talk about the product I used to strip the receivers down, Klean Strip Premium Stripper.
First of all a safety brief, don't fuck around with this stuff, wear heavy duty gloves, not just nitrile ones, and safety glasses when you're using it. It burns when it gets on the skin and you definitely don't want it in your eyes. I primarily use this when I really want to get down to the base material and mostly when that base material is steel or aluminum, in my experience it's not safe for plastic but according to the label it's safe for wood.
I was curious how this would stack up against Citristrip Gel and non-chlorinated brake cleaner, which I also have on hand so I taped off sections of a take off barrel that had been Duracoated and hit sections of the barrel with the Citristrip, Klean Strip, and brake cleaner.
The long and short of it is Klean Strip will make quick work of a barreled action and after less than an hour with the Klean Strip I could strip the Duracoat off with a wood craft stick. Citristrip Gel wasn't getting it done, if I scrubbed really hard I with a scotchbrite pad I could get a little bit of it off but it was a lot of effort.
The brake cleaner by itself didn't do much but spraying some onto a scotchbrite pad and scrubbing a section of the barrel got me down to bare metal but it was a lot of effort; I wouldn't want to do a whole barrel that way.
I left the Citristrip on for about four hours to see if maybe it just took longer on the Duracoat. Nope, about the only thing it did really was make the finish a shade lighter.
Citristrip does well when I want to strip some rattle can paint off of plastic pieces or other furniture that I want to be more careful with, it's the kinder, gentler paint stripper. For stripping anything short of Cerakote off a barreled action or chassis though Klean Strip is going to be my go to.
First of all a safety brief, don't fuck around with this stuff, wear heavy duty gloves, not just nitrile ones, and safety glasses when you're using it. It burns when it gets on the skin and you definitely don't want it in your eyes. I primarily use this when I really want to get down to the base material and mostly when that base material is steel or aluminum, in my experience it's not safe for plastic but according to the label it's safe for wood.
I was curious how this would stack up against Citristrip Gel and non-chlorinated brake cleaner, which I also have on hand so I taped off sections of a take off barrel that had been Duracoated and hit sections of the barrel with the Citristrip, Klean Strip, and brake cleaner.
The long and short of it is Klean Strip will make quick work of a barreled action and after less than an hour with the Klean Strip I could strip the Duracoat off with a wood craft stick. Citristrip Gel wasn't getting it done, if I scrubbed really hard I with a scotchbrite pad I could get a little bit of it off but it was a lot of effort.
The brake cleaner by itself didn't do much but spraying some onto a scotchbrite pad and scrubbing a section of the barrel got me down to bare metal but it was a lot of effort; I wouldn't want to do a whole barrel that way.
I left the Citristrip on for about four hours to see if maybe it just took longer on the Duracoat. Nope, about the only thing it did really was make the finish a shade lighter.
Citristrip does well when I want to strip some rattle can paint off of plastic pieces or other furniture that I want to be more careful with, it's the kinder, gentler paint stripper. For stripping anything short of Cerakote off a barreled action or chassis though Klean Strip is going to be my go to.
