Franmar Soy Strip Marine Coating remover

[Kristian]

Great stuff!

Wanted to remove VC17 bottom paint from my Shields this fall, and didn't want to sand/inhale the stuff.

Was probably going to use interstrip or aircraft stripper, but heard about this and thought I'd give it a go. Below is an excerpt from my blog:



"I decided to try the soy strip on a large area and see how it went. This stuff is great! Here's how it went:

First I masked off the keel, with a 7" gap left open over the seam. I taped plastic sheet to the bottom of the masked area and draped it over the trailer. I used the plastic to protect the lower keel from drips, and to catch the scrapings which would (hopefully) be falling off.







The soy strip is pretty odorless, and looks a lot like honey in consistency. I brushed it on pretty thick, and it hangs well on the vertical surface. I probably had about 1/8" thick layer on the keel.


Within about a half hour, the paint was lifting right off! I was really impressed with this and couldn't help scraping a section. It came off really easily, but I figured it could only get better with a little more time so I reapplied and walked around the yard to measure other Shields for waterline locations.


I gave it about 2 hours, and started scraping. The paint came off in sheets from the deadwood, and was only a little more stubborn coming off of the bottom of the hull. The difference between the two was that the deadwood had been repainted at some point and had a barrier coat primer, and the hull was gelcoat under the VC17. Even on the gelocat the paint came off with one or two good scrapes. To scrape off a 7"x6' area took about 5 minutes.

When it was scraped I washed with water, then acetone to take off any tenacious globs of paint, and the water again. All the mess did indeed land in the plastic and tossed away."


I'm going to try it again in colder temps soon and will report back.

Also, the company is a peach to deal with! It was at my door next day with standard shipping.

[Rachel]

Thanks for starting this thread; I'll be interested to hear how the Soy Strip works in colder temps.

Rachel

[Ceasar Choppy]

I'll let you know how it works in the Spring, but based on my experience, with cooler temps, theoretically, it shouldn't evaporate as fast so maybe it is more effective?

I've used the Soy Sauce for stripping old varnish off teak, and I have to agree, it is good stuff. While we kept it on for about 3 hours under saran wrap, scraping off the old varnish was a breeze, and as an added bonus, we didn't need to bleach it since the soy sauce tends to do that on its own.

[Kristian]

Another Shields is using the remainder of my gallon on their bottom. Cold seems to slow it down quite a bit, but they're still having good results, just with longer dwell time.

The real appeal of this stuff to me isn't it's effectiveness, as it's not any better than interstrip. But man, do I like the lack of fumes, burns and toxic leavings. You do still have to be careful with the scrapings, but thats a given with bottom paint.

[JSmith]

We used it last Fall in 40-50 degree wx. Actually had poor results- even covered it with plastic film for hours/overnight. At these temps really not much action. We noticed a dramatic improvement the one day we had mid-upper 50's.