struggling to remove cpo from Williams wood cp

jdhogg

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i know there are a lot of posts regarding this, but didn't see any regarding a wood cp. restoring a joust and trying to remove the cpo. bits and pieces of the cpo were already removed, so i couldn't try to take it off with in one piece.

slopped on a coat of citristrip, let it sit for about an hour and it took off the top graphics easily. slopped on another coat, waited another hour, and it's not doing much to the adhesive. if i scrape hard enough with a paint scraper, i can get little chunks off at a time that booger up into little pieces and that's it.

top part of the cp has a metal plate, but would it be ok to use pb blaster or carb cleaner to get this stuff off?
 
No easy way with those williams cp's.. just time and elbow grease.
 
you are pretty much fubar now sander and coarse sandpaper and lots of work is about allyou can do

always use a heat gun to remove cpo and side art if you use striper's it alwasy does what yours did it seprates the adheasive from the art itself making the art easy yo remove but good luck removing the left over adheasive
 
There is always an easier way. Go get a can of Goof-Off, a roll of paper towls and 3 garbage bags. Do this outside or you will be sorry when you wake up on the floor the next morning :crazy:.

Pour some of the Goof-off on a paper towel and clean up as much of the adhesive as you can. Then take several paper towels, spread then over the top of the old CPO. Douse it liberally with Goof-off and put inside the first garbage bag. Take the open end of the first garbage bag and put it into the second, so the open end is on the bottom of the second. Then so the same with the third over the first two.

It is not foolproof but it will help trap the Goof-off inside the bags. Leave it overnight. The next morning, open it up and scrape what is left off. Use some more Goof-off to clean the top of the CP. Let it dry and then sand and bondo/wood filler until the top surface is the way you want it (drill any additional holes and patch any old holes during this step).

The application of Goof-off in this way has worked for me every time. There are some CPO's that took a bit of scraping, but most of the time the Goof-off make the adhesive just melt off.

The attached picture was from my first attempt (and as you can see I did it inside, which is why I know to do it outside from now on!). There were 3 CPO's stuck on that one, a Stargate CP, have no idea what the middle one was and a Jail Break CPO

ken
 

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Geeze, is that really easier? All the chemicals and days waiting, just put a little muscle into it and you can be done in an hour.
 
I did one the other day. No chemicals used. I peeled off as much as I could by hand, then used a razor blade to scrape off as much of the adhesive as possible. Used my palm sander to sand the rest off.

Sure, the razor blade made a few nicks and gouges in the wood, but I patched them with wood bondo, sanded it to perfection, then put on the new CPO...
 
The Robotron CP I restored wasn't fun, but my best results overall were sanding it with an electric sander. Came out perfect, but was definitely a lot of work.
 
Geeze, is that really easier? All the chemicals and days waiting, just put a little muscle into it and you can be done in an hour.

It depends on the adhesives the operators used to stick the old CPO's on. Trust me there have been many times that I have thought about using the barbeque method on a Williams CP. The Goof-off method works and doesn't require heavy scraping which can leave big gouges that have to be filled and sanded. That all takes time too.

ken
 
Before I started this thread, I was pretty careful on the cp, not to scratch the wood at all. After reading this, I used modessit's advice and aggressively scraped the old cpo off; not concerned if I were to scratch the cp, but used a 14-in-1 scrapper tool instead. To my surprise, I did not scratch the cp much at all since the tool has a blunt edge. Really hammered on the stuff that looks like brittle saran wrap with the adhesive under it since the Citristrip would not work on that stuff at all. I was left with the picture. Boogered-up adhesive that I could not get off. Put some Cirtristrip on and let it sit for half-hour. Softened up the adhesive and scraped right off.
 

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How weird, I am doing this same thing right now. Started Saturday and had the main CPO off in 3 minutes with no chemicals. There is still a half sticky, clear adhesive residue remaining, but I'll use brake cleaner to get the wood as clean as a meat whistle at Boysticks on Saucy Sausage Saturday.

FrizzChris-1.jpg
 
How weird, I am doing this same thing right now. Started Saturday and had the main CPO off in 3 minutes with no chemicals. There is still a half sticky, clear adhesive residue remaining, but I'll use brake cleaner to get the wood as clean as a meat whistle at Boysticks on Saucy Sausage Saturday.

FrizzChris-1.jpg

aren't you concerned that the brake cleaner absorb into the wood?

nice photoshop work btw, i would hit the "unsharp mask" once more to blend in the flesh tones.
 
Resurrecting an old thread!
I just removed an original Stargate cpo and used a heat gun and it came off soooo easy.
I just have to remove some adhesive left behind but that should be no problem either.
It took maybe 10-15 minutes to get the whole cpo off.
 
Williams are wood cp's.. you don't want to use chemical strippers because the oils and chemicals soak into the wood and ruin the adhesion of your new overlay. Good old fashioned hard work gets this one done right. Use a heat gun to get rid of the overlay itself, a heat gun and razor scraper to get rid of most of the glue and some 80 grit sandpaper to get rid of the rest.
 
I've used Strip-Eez with great success. It's not an easy/safe stripper, like the citrus stuff..it's nasty and burns the skin, but it will eat the adhesive.
 
Pulling a special move here: "Old Guy from Altered Beast" move (that's "Rise from your Grave" to those not in the know).

about to do this on not 1 but 2 robotron panels. Great info here, i'll definitely use the heat gun method first. but what about that big square piece under the dust washers? i use to think that was metal but since i got my 2nd panel (which the squares are bowed up and out) i'm thinking twice. guess i'll have to use some care when doing that area as i don't want the heat to warp my un damaged set. Hopefully some strong adhesive will hold down the warped ones when i go to reinstall.

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On my Major Havoc conversion page here I used a product called "Super Remover".

SuperRemover02.jpg


It was easy to apply, had very low odor, worked really fast, and left everything clean. It's made for wood so no worries about leaving the wood impregnated with oily residues or a bad smell.

On my Robotron, which I did a few years back, I used "Polystrippa". The results were not as clean as you can see here and the stuff was stinky and not water soluble. I had to clean up afterward using Acetone.

Bill B.
 
Pulling a special move here: "Old Guy from Altered Beast" move (that's "Rise from your Grave" to those not in the know).

about to do this on not 1 but 2 robotron panels. Great info here, i'll definitely use the heat gun method first. but what about that big square piece under the dust washers? i use to think that was metal but since i got my 2nd panel (which the squares are bowed up and out) i'm thinking twice. guess i'll have to use some care when doing that area as i don't want the heat to warp my un damaged set. Hopefully some strong adhesive will hold down the warped ones when i go to reinstall.

On my Robotron restoration pages, you can see several pages describing what I did with the control panel starting here.

Regarding the metal plates, they are supposed to be completely flat and mounted flush with the top wood surface. The CPO should lay flat across the them. The plastic dust blocking disk goes under the metal plates, NOT on top. If it is on top of the metal plate, it will be caught between the plate and the CPO forcing the CPO upward. Obviously, not a good thing. Some people place the disk on top of the CPO but that's butt ugly (imho) not to mention not factory correct.



Also, you may want to remove the plates so that you can paint them and also to get at the original T-nuts and replace them with new stainless steel ones since you have the panel apart anyway. The old steel ones are probably rusted and new ones will make assembly easier later. In my case, my panel had damaged threads since some jerk forced in wrong thread bolts at some point. The same goes for the T-nuts on the front face:

robotron_cp_26.jpg
robotron_cp_11.jpg


Bill B.
http://www.biltronix.com
 
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